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

by Andy Borowitz

“Eighty percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.” When he reprised his theory about these toxic emissions during the 1980 campaign, students at California’s Claremont College affixed this sign to a tree: “Chop Me Down Before I Kill Again.”

Spencer posted this motto on his office wall: “If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bull.” This approach would be tested with Reagan, who lacked the former but abounded with the latter.

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.

Ferris’s watchword—“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”—reflects

As Dubya and Reagan both showed, if you don’t have facts to support your case, fear and hate are handy substitutes.

In 2020, Stuart Stevens, who worked on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, published It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. Stevens points out what few Republicans have acknowledged: the views that people find abhorrent in Trump make him not the antithesis of Reagan but his rightful successor.

Actually, the minute you get into an argument online, the other side automatically wins, because you’re expending energy that could have been applied to political activities that are productive and not just symbolic.

But people like me—college-educated white people—are most likely to engage in what Hersh calls “political hobbyism.” We think we’re participating in politics, but we’re often just spectators, following it the way we follow sports.