Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote humorously critiques the idea of bipartisan consensus as a sign of trouble rather than cooperation.
P. J. O'Rourke uses humor to highlight the potential dangers of political consensus in Washington. The phrase 'bipartisan consensus' suggests that when politicians from both parties agree, it often means there is a serious issue at hand, comparable to the situation where a doctor, lawyer, and spouse all concur a person needs help. This underscores a general distrust in political agreement, implying that it may not necessarily be a positive development.
Themes
BipartisanConsensusPoliticsHumorCritique
In practice
Example use cases
A political analyst referencing this quote during a discussion on the nature of American politics.
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Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
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I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
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Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
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The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
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