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If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry

Country Roads

While listening to the radio recently I heard a commentator observe that we are living in a “highly charged political environment.” Wow! Talk about understatement.

Now, I can’t say too much because I am an opinionated guy myself and have probably ignited as many political firestorms as the next guy. Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, I think we can agree that this is indeed a “highly charged” time.

Perhaps we need to spend a little time looking on the sunny side. The Bible says “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Possibly some merry quotes about politics will soothe our highly charged hearts.

I will start with Erma Bombeck, a writer who I truly miss. “It is fast approaching the point,” she wrote, “where I don’t want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.”

President Harry Truman was a good ol’ boy from Missouri and he explained things to be easily understood. Of his political career, Truman wrote, “My choice early in life was between whether to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”

Politics have always been messy. More than 80 years ago Will Rogers observed, “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”

President Ronald Reagan had a gift for words and a good understanding of the political process. “I have wondered at times,” he said, “what The Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through Congress.”

Campaigning for political office can be brutal. My friend, Congressman Leonard Boswell, who passed away in August, said of the process, “Take a good look at me, because you’ll never recognize me once my opponent gets done with me.”

As with Congressman Boswell, successful politicians don’t take themselves too seriously.

President Lyndon Johnson observed, “Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.”

President Bill Clinton weighed in with this: “Being president is like running a cemetery; you’ve got a lot of people under you and nobody’s listening.”

President Richard Nixon was not enamored with the media. “It is the responsibility of the media to look at the President with a microscope,” Nixon said, “but they go too far when they use a proctoscope.”

Abraham Lincoln was a quick-witted president. Honest Abe is reported to have responded to a charge of insincerity with, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

My interest in presidential politics took root in 1956 when, as an 8-year-old, I watched the election returns on a neighbor’s television set with my father. (My family had not yet acquired a TV set.) Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson II in that presidential election. Stevenson, a three-time unsuccessful (but quite witty) presidential candidate, had said, “I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.”

Though a man of remarkable character, Jimmy Carter is not remembered as a strong president. Sometime after leaving the Oval Office, Carter observed, “My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me they use all their fingers.”

Politics requires money and lots of it. Even socialists know this. Early 20th century Socialist political organizer, Oscar Ameringer, wrote, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”

Present day American journalist and political satirist P.J. O’Rourke described our two-party political system this way: “The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.”

And so it goes. If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.

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