Chris Lamb - The Art of the Political Putdown: The Greatest Comebacks, Ripostes, and Retorts in History (Political Humor Book, Funny and Witty Quotes from Politicians)

To our wives, Lesly and Maryamand the sharp- and dim-witted politicians who made this book possible.

Copyright 2020 by Chris Lamb and Will Moredock.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN 978-1-4521-8396-1 (epub, mobi)
ISBN 978-1-4521-8385-5 (hardcover)

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CHRIS LAMB

WILL MOREDOCK

WILL MOREDOCK

CHRIS LAMB

CHRIS LAMB

CHRIS LAMB

CHRIS LAMB

CHRIS LAMB

ANDY BRACK

CHRIS LAMB

CHRIS LAMB

WILL MOREDOCK

Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn, the moderator of a Democratic presidential debate in Iowa on December 13, 2007, mentioned Senator Barack Obamas promise for a new approach in the countrys foreign policy. She then asked the first-term senator from Illinois how he could achieve this when so many of his advisers had worked for President Bill Clinton.

Before Obama could answer, he was interrupted by Senator Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination. I want to hear that, she said, provoking laughter.

Obama paused for a moment and replied, Well, Hillary, Im looking forward to you advising me, as well.

Laughter followed from the audience and the other candidatesexcept Clinton, whose self-satisfied smile disappeared.

Obama won the exchange. Several weeks later, Obama won the Iowa caucuses and eventually the Democratic nomination. He was elected president in November 2008.

Hillary Clinton advised him as his secretary of state.

The ability to deliver a comeback that deflects criticism and leaves an opponent speechless can be a potent political weapon. It can be both a bludgeon to injure an opponent and a shield to deflect an opponents attacks. But, perhaps most importantly, it can establish ones superiority over a rival. In the dog-eat-dog world of politics, nobody wants to end up as the fire hydrant.

Comebacks, however, are rareor at least medium rarein politics because they require qualities underappreciated in political campaigning: a good ear, a nimble brain, a sharp wit, and a comics timing.

In addition, the remark must be spontaneous, and few things in the carefully choreographed world of politicsincluding ad libsare left to spontaneity. Winston Churchill, known for his quick and trenchant wit, explained the secret behind the spontaneous comeback: All the best off-the-cuff remarks are prepared days beforehand.

Churchill provides many of the responses in this book, including the one for which he is perhaps best known.

Churchill had been drinking heavily at a party when he bumped into a political rival, Labour Party stalwart Bessie Braddock.

Mr. Churchill, you are drunk, Braddock scolded him.

And Bessie, you are ugly, Churchill said and after a pause, added, You are very ugly. Ill be sober in the morning.

Churchills wit could indeed cut deeply. This approach works better in England, where verbal sparring in Parliament is a contact sport. John Wilkes, an eighteenth-century political reformer, was involved in a particularly angry exchange with John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who yelled at Wilkes, Sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!

Whereupon Wilkes responded, That, sir, depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.

Theres no record of Montagus response, or even if he had one. He probably put what was left of his manhood in a thimble and skulked away.

In his 2005 book, Viva la Repartee, Mardy Grothe writes that the word retort, which first appeared in 1557, comes from the Latin word retortus, which, he said, loosely means to turn back. This, Grothe said, is exactly what a perfectly executed retort does: It turns back a personal attack, transforming a momentary threat into a personal triumph.

What makes the retorts in this book worthy of inclusion is that most were delivered in quick response to a rivals verbal attack. We admire those who can do this because most of us recoil when insulted or we think of something to say long after the moment has passed.

Grothe included the French expression lesprit de lescalier, literally the wit of the staircase, that refers to the clever comebacks that come to us as were walking down the stairs and departing. Journalist Heywood Broun, who is included in this book, said, Repartee is what you wish youd said.

French and British politicians have exchanged insults far longer than America has had politicians to insult. The American tradition of expressing derision toward authority is as old as the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. There has always been something sui generis in the American comic spirit, Christopher Morley wrote, though, I dont know if it has been recognizably defined. A touch of brutality, perhaps? Anger rather than humor? Various words rise to mind... sardonic, extravagant, macabrewe reject each one. Yet the mere fact that it suggests itself points to some essential hardness or sharpness of spirit.

In the United States, a sarcastic quip may regale party loyalists, but it runs the risk of turning away undecided voters in an election. If you live by the rapier wit, you may die by it. Republican senator Bob Dole twice ran for president and lost each time in part, observers said, because his sense of humor was widely viewed as mean-spirited.

Dole did everything he could to confirm that reputation when he ran as President Gerald Fords running mate during the 1976 presidential election. Dole accused Democrats of being warmongers during a debate with Walter Mondale, the Democratic vice presidential candidate.

I figured out the other day, Dole said, that if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars, it would be about a million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit.

I think that Senator Dole has richly deserved his reputation as a hatchet man, Mondale responded. Does he really think there was a partisan difference over our involvement in the fight against Nazi Germany?

After Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Ford in the presidential election, Dole was asked to reflect on his debate performance. I was supposed to go for the jugular, he said. And I didmy own.

Sometimes, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, a comeback is just a comeback; other times, it can result in unintendedand historicconsequences. In 1856, Preston Brooks, a South Carolina congressman, responded to a vicious speech by Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator, by nearly beating Sumner to death in the Senate chamber. Today we can clearly see that this incident was one of the provocations that led to the Civil War. And we might ask, Did Donald Trump run for president in 2016 in response to being humiliated by President Barack Obama during the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner?

This book includes more than three hundred comebacks and eleven essays that attempt to capture the value of a quick punishing wit in politics, from an Athenian lawgiver in the sixth century BC to the present.