185 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said

Ted Rueter panders to Democratic party lines by collecting 370 oratorical guffaws credited to popular politicians. Categorized in alphabetical order and presented by subject topic, the quips include: Forgiveness: "In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times we should forgive, and he said seventy times seven. Well, I want you to know that I'm keeping a chart." --Hillary Rodham Clinton Me: "I am Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States of America." --Al Gore

Ted Rueter panders to Republican party lines by collecting 370 oratorical guffaws credited to popular politicians. Categorized in alphabetical order and presented by subject topic, the quips include: Osama bin Laden: "[Osama bin Laden] is either alive and well or alive and not well or not alive." --Donald Rumsfeld Misunderestimation: "They misunderestimated me." --George W. Bush

Am I different? Yeah. Deep down, you know you want to wear wider bottoms; you're just not secure enough. . . . Do I do my hair with a weed whacker? I admit it." --Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio, 1985-2002) Supposedly some of our brightest speakers, politicians say some pretty stupid things. Members of America's major political parties put out a roaring stream of downright dumb comments, pronouncements, and observations. For proof, look no further than Ted Rueter's 449 Stupid Things Republicans Have Said and 449 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said. 449 Stupid Things Republicans Have Said includes subjects ranging from cloning and federal spending to foreign affairs and kissing. Asked what he and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have in common, President George W. Bush remarked, "Well, we both use Colgate toothpaste." According to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear energy is really very good."; Rueter catches the best of the best, whether the gaffes came from Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Strom Thurmond. The Dems fair little better in 449 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said. Al Gore said, "I would have kissed Tipper longer at the convention." Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a 2000 campaign interview with Hot 97, a Manhattan hip-hop radio station, stated; "Motown, Motown: That's my era. Those are my people." Rueter snags them all and provides two wonderful collections of quotations that will truly go down in history.

"Am I different? Yeah. Deep down, you know you want to wear wider bottoms; you're just not secure enough. . . . Do I do my hair with a weed whacker? I admit it." --Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio, 1985-2002) Supposedly some of our brightest speakers, politicians say some pretty stupid things. Members of America's major political parties put out a roaring stream of downright dumb comments, pronouncements, and observations. For proof, look no further than Ted Rueter's 449 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said. In 449 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said. Al Gore said, "I would have kissed Tipper longer at the convention." Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a 2000 campaign interview with Hot 97, a Manhattan hip-hop radio station, stated, "Motown, Motown: That's my era. Those are my people." Rueter snags them all and provides two wonderful collections of quotations that will truly go down in history.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN

If he had been pressed, Macaulay would probably have admitted that there are cases in which human acts and impulses to act occur independently of any idea of an end to be gained by them. If I have a piece of grit in my eye and ask some one to take it out with the corner of his handkerchief, I generally close the eye as soon as the handkerchief comes near, and always feel a strong impulse to do so. Nobody supposes that I close my eye because, after due consideration, I think it my interest to do so.

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.