The Yuckster

WHEN the people behind Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations consider whether to put any of Bob Dole’s utterances in their next edition—he has none in the current one—they’ll have plenty of choices. There’s the bitter line from the 1988 GOP primaries, spoken to then-Vice President George Bush: “Stop lying about my record.” There’s one of the great blunders of recent political history, from the 1976 debate with Walter Mondale: “I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans—enough to fill the city of Detroit.” A later, self-deprecating quip on this unfortunate statement may itself deserve status as a minor classic: “They told me to go for the jugular, so I did: mine.”

Now there’s a very late entry: “Easy, boy.”

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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WHEN the people behind Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations consider whether to put any of Bob Dole’s utterances in their next edition—he has none in the current one—they’ll have plenty of choices. There’s the bitter line from the 1988 GOP primaries, spoken to then-Vice President George Bush: “Stop lying about my record.” There’s one of the great blunders of recent political history, from the 1976 debate with Walter Mondale: “I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans—enough to fill the city of Detroit.” A later, self-deprecating quip on this unfortunate statement may itself deserve status as a minor classic: “They told me to go for the jugular, so I did: mine.”

Now there’s a very late entry: “Easy, boy.”

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.