Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber

by Andy Borowitz

I want the president of the United States to be intellectually curious for a simple reason: I think the person running the country should be smarter than I am. We’ve just lived through the alternative, and it was only good for the liquor industry.

Once Democrats gin up a two-trillion-dollar war to find nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, ignore and then politicize a virus that causes nearly a million needless deaths, and attempt a violent overthrow of the U.S. government, I’ll get cracking on a book about them. Until then, I’ll recognize them for what they are: supporting players in our national pageant of stupidity, but not towering icons like George W. Bush or Donald J. Trump.

Reagan demonstrated that, in the hands of a talented TV performer, one joke could sink a thousand facts. But he had enjoyed another advantage as he cruised to victory in 1980: an all-star roster of morally dubious advisers. His gang of goons included Roy Cohn, the disgraced former aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy, and three hard-charging political consultants, Roger Ailes, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort. It was hard to imagine another Republican presidential candidate assembling such a team, or coming up with a campaign slogan as winning as Reagan’s: “Let’s Make America Great Again.”

Despite his reputation as a deficit hawk, he added more to the national debt than all previous presidents combined: it soared from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion on his watch. (Math is yet another stupid thing.)