Displaying yourself as a whiz.
But
If it’s true that Sununu’s
So smart, you’d think that he’d know
What always defines the truly fine minds:
The smartest guys don’t let it show.
1990
AL GORE
Vice President of the United States
Observed at a Clinton Press Conference
What’s that, behind the President-Elect—
That manlike object stiff from head to toe?
A statue of a noble Southern pol?
A waxen image crafted by Tussaud?
But wait! He breathed. He blinked. He scratched his nose.
This couldn’t be an adamantine blob.
This manlike object seems to be alive.
It’s Albert Gore. He’s there to do his job.
1992
BILL CLINTON
President of the United States
Just Cool It
I liked the way that Reagan simply vanished when he could.
For weeks, we’d hear a single phrase: “He’s happy chopping wood.”
If we were not aware of him, he didn’t seem to care.
When Ronald Reagan wasn’t there, he simply wasn’t there.
This Clinton’s with us day and night—his voice, his plans, his sax.
At times, you want to say, “Hey, Bill, just cool it, guy. Relax.”
Yes, Clinton needs a rest, all right, and we need one from him.
We needn’t know with whom he golfs, with whom he takes a swim.
We can’t absorb so much of him. That’s one of our frustrations.
I think that our relationship needs separate vacations.
1993
LLOYD BENTSEN
Texas Senator, Secretary of the Treasury
A Short History of Lloyd Bentsen’s Dealings with Special Interests
The man is known for quo pro quidness.
In Texas, that’s how folks do bidness.
1993
STEVE FORBES
Contender for the Republican Presidential Nomination
Welcome, Malcolm Forbes, Jr.
And now we have a junior Forbes,
Named Steve, who cheerfully absorbs
The campaign costs. (For he enjoys
What Daddy couldn’t spend on toys.)
He longs for tax rates that are flat—
The same for him, a plutocrat,
As for his gardeners and his chars
And all the men who wax his cars.
Economies, he says, can grow
If builders get to keep their dough.
If all of them are forced to share it,
They’ll lose incentive to inherit.
1995
RICHARD LUGAR
Indiana Senator, Contender for the
Republican Presidential Nomination
Lugar as Candidate
Poor Lugar’s problem’s quite specific:
The man is simply soporific.
His speeches, well prepared and deep,
Affect one much like counting sheep.
Although his résumé is great, he
Can really make your eyelids weighty.
His ads now say that he’s the guy
We want in charge if bad types try
To do atomic terror here.
He may be right, except it’s clear
If Dick is prez—make no mistake—
We’ll need the Bomb to stay awake.
1995
PETE WILSON
California Governor, Contender for the
Republican Presidential Nomination
On the Withdrawal of Pete Wilson
A month’s campaign for Wilson came to naught.
He tried to sell his soul, and no one bought.
1996
ROBERT DOLE
Kansas Senator, Republican Nominee for President
A Deadline Poet’s Adieu to Bob Dole
So many folks will miss you when you leave,
And as a poet, Bob, I’m going to grieve.
I’ll miss your wit, the darkness of your soul—
But mostly all those words that rhyme with Dole.
Yes, “decontrol” and “poll” and “camisole”
And “goal” and “Old King Cole” and “escarole.”
With Clinton staying in the White House it’ll
Remain so hard; he rhymes with very little.
You’ll be nearby. We say, in voce sotto,
At least the Watergate’s not Kansas, Toto.
1996
ALFONSE D’AMATO
New York Senator
Senator D’Amato Says that the Finance Committee May Investigate Clinton Deals
Here’s what could drive a man to drink—
To drink until he’s wholly blotto:
The thought that he is being judged
On ethics by Alfonse D’Amato.
As this stretch suggests, the senator’s name was not easy to rhyme, although I found that it did rhyme with “sleazeball obbligato.”
1996
RICHARD NIXON
President of the United States
On the New Surfeit of Presidential Tapes
The tapes are coming thick and fast.
There’s JFK, with staff amassed
When war with Russia was so close
We all might have to say adios.
And Lyndon Johnson’s tapes reveal
The man was keen to make a deal—
And to that end was not averse
To being bullyboy or worse.
Such tapes are bound to be replete
With clay in presidential feet.
(Republicans up on the Hill
Must wish they had such tapes of Bill;
They think that Bill, although he’s canny,
Has clay extending to his fanny.)
But when it comes to feet of clay,
New Nixon tapes have won the day.
His quick response to any news
Is break the law or blame the Jews.
We hear him planning to defraud,
Collecting dough for posts abroad,
Discussing B&E techniques.
In Nixon’s tapes, the master speaks.
1997
GEORGE W. BUSH
President of the United States
The Effect on His Campaign of the Release of George W. Bush’s College Transcript
Obliviously on he sails,
With marks not quite as good as Quayle’s.
The fact that those marks got him into Harvard Business School is another confirmation of which class of Americans the original affirmative action system was established to benefit.
1999
JOHN ASHCROFT
Missouri Senator, Attorney General
The Only King We Have Is Jesus
A Newly Unearthed Gospel Song Credited to John Ashcroft
As I told the Bob Jones students,
Seated white and black apart,
This nation is unique, not like the rest.
As I faced those godly youngsters,
I told them from the heart
Just why this land will always be the best:
The only king we have is Jesus,
And I feel blessed to bring that news.
The only king we have is Jesus.
I can’t explain why we’ve got Jews.
So because our king is Jesus,
I’m often heard to say,
Our kids should pray to Him each day in class.
If some kids just stay silent,
That’s perfectly okay,
But they’ll all be given Jesus tests to pass.
The only king we have is Jesus.
That’s the truth we all perceive.
The only king we have is Jesus,
So Hindus may just have to leave.
Now Jesus hates abortion,
’Cause Jesus loves all life.
They call it choice; it’s murder all the same.
The killers must be punished—
The doctor, man, and wife.
We’ll execute them all in Jesus’ name.
The only king we have is Jesus.
It’s Jesus who can keep us pure.
The only king we have is Jesus,
And He’s Republican for sure.
The homosexual lifestyle
Could make our Jesus weep.
He loathed their jokes about which cheek to turn.
Yes, Jesus came to teach us
With whom we’re supposed to sleep.
Ignore that and you’ll go to hell to burn.
(FINAL CHORUS SUNG IN TONGUES)
Tron smleck gha dreednus hoke b’loofnok
Frak fag narst fag madoondah greeb.
Tron smleck gha dreednus hoke b’loofnok
Dar popish, flarge dyur darky, hebe.
2001
DICK CHENEY
Wyoming Congressman, Secretary of Defense,
Vice President of the United States
Cheney’s Head: An Explanation
One mystery I’ve tried to disentangle:
Why Cheney’s head is always at an angle.
He tries to come on straight, and yet I can’t
Help notice that his head is at a slant.
When Cheney’s questioned on the Sunday shows,
The Voice of Reason is his favorite pose.
He drones in monotones. He never smiles—
Explaining why some suspects don’t need trials,
Or why right now it simply stands to reason
That criticizing Bush amounts to treason,
Or which important precept it would spoil
To know who wrote our policy on oil,
Or why as CEO he wouldn’t know
What Halliburton’s books were meant to show.
And as he speaks I’ve kept a careful check
On when his head’s held crooked on his neck.
The code is broken, after years of trying:
He only cocks his head when he is lying.
2002
RICHARD PERLE
Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, Deputy Field Marshal of the Sissy Hawk Brigade (Vietnam War Evaders Lobbying for an Invasion of Iraq)
Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?
Consider kids who bullied Richard Perle—
Those kids who said Perle threw just like a girl,
Those kids who poked poor Perle to show how soft
A momma’s boy could be, those kids who oft
Times pushed poor Richard down and could be heard
Addressing him as Sissy, Wimp, or Nerd.
Those kids have got a lot to answer for,
’Cause Richard Perle now wants to start a war.
The message his demeanor gets across:
He’ll show those playground bullies who’s the boss.
He still looks soft, but when he writes or talks
There is no tougher dude among the hawks.
And he’s got planes and ships and tanks and guns—
All manned, of course, by other people’s sons.
In an uncharacteristically prankish mood, I wrote that poem without knowing anything about Richard Perle’s childhood. After it appeared, though, I heard from one of Perle’s grade school classmates, who wanted to know how I’d found out that Perle had been bullied. Then another classmate wrote The Nation, saying that she didn’t remember Perle as a wimp but as simply “very serious.” After gathering a couple of true details, I answered Perle’s defender in The Nation: “You were not one of the fourth-grade girls who used to push Richard down the hill on Fuller Street, and you didn’t laugh once in sixth grade when Rocco Guntermann, from Mrs. Flynn’s class, referred to Richard as ‘Perlie Girl’? Fine. Whatever you say. If the United States invades Iraq without provocation, it won’t be your fault.”
She wrote again. She remembered Fuller Street and Mrs. Flynn, but she claimed there was no Rocco Guntermann. My final answer in the letters column was, “I suppose Rocco Guntermann, the classmate whose existence you deny, did not say to me just last week, ‘We can settle this if Perlie Girl meets me near the swings at five o’clock on Friday, and tell him not to bring two teachers and his mother this time.’ Would it surprise you to learn that Rocco is now a psychotherapist in Sherman Oaks?”
2002
COLIN POWELL
Secretary of State
Farewell, Colin Powell
We need to say farewell to Colin Powell,
Who should have long ago tossed in the towel.
Instead he lent his good name to the team
In vouching for its cockamamie scheme.
And now the team has shoved him out the door—
Not needed anymore (they got their war).
He’s let himself be used by lesser men.
It’s sad to see, as we remember when
Some thought he was the President-Elect to be,
How easily is done a Colinectomy.
2004
TOM DELAY
Texas Congressman, House Majority Leader
I Think I Heard a Liberal Say
I think I heard a liberal say
To this DA, “Hooray! Hooray!
Because you finally made my day
When you indicted Tom DeLay.
They’ll never fashion, come what may,
An ethics rule that he’d obey.
Corruption’s in his DNA.
It dominates his résumé.
He works the shadowed shades of gray.
The moment that his side held sway,
He made the lobbyists on K
Just hire those who thought his way,
Then pay and pay and pay and pay.
For access, he did pay-to-play.
The Congress of the USA
Became the cages of Bombay.
So here’s what I’d like for the Hammer:
A whole bunch of years in the slammer.”
2004
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice
Sung to the Tune of “March of the Siamese Children” from The King and I, and Accompanied by the Secretary Herself on the Baby Grand
Condoleezza Rice, who is cold as ice, is precise with her advice.
Yes, she is quite precise, and, yes, she’s cold as ice.
In her can be found talents that abound. She’s renowned, though tightly wound. Yes, talents can be found, and, yes, she’s tightly wound.
She once avowed we might see a large mushroom cloud if more reign by Hussein were allowed,
Which turned out to be: total bushwa, yes, total bushwa.
When she accused him of buying tubes only used to make nukes the truth was abused.
And she knew she spoke total bushwa, yes, total bushwa.
So to serve her guy, she will testify to a lie she hopes you’ll buy—to try to petrify, precisely tell a lie.
Condoleezza Rice, who is cold as ice, is precise with her advice.
Yes, she is quite precise, and, yes, she’s cold as ice.
2005
GEORGE ALLEN
Virginia Senator, Presumed Contender for the
Republican Presidential Nomination
George Allen Calls a Dark-Skinned American a “Macaca”
Republican insiders once agreed,
When contemplating who’d most likely lead
Their presidential ticket in ’08,
George Allen was the perfect candidate.
He fit what’s often valued by the Right:
Quite cheerful, Reaganesque, and not too bright.
His ’06 Senate race was called a breeze,
But then one comment brought him to his knees.
He said “macaca” in a way that fully
Revealed him simply as a racist bully.
The deed was done that fast; within a beat
Thi
s man was set to lose his Senate seat.
One message should have then been learned by all:
That YouTube’s always lurking in the hall.
2006
DONALD RUMSFELD
Secretary of Defense
An Opponent of the War Attempts to Say Farewell to Donald Rumsfeld with at Least a Modicum of Courtesy
To be so wrong so often is a curse,
But being arrogantly wrong is worse.
Still, briefings were a hoot. Our favorite feature?
That tone—exactly like a third-grade teacher
Explaining math to those forevermore
Too slow to get promoted to grade four.
So may you find, as down life’s road you’re wending,
More folks to whom you’re always condescending.
2006
DAVID VITTER
Louisiana Senator
On the Latest Washington Scandal
All Washington, D.C., is now atwitter
With talk about some deeds of David Vitter.
With sanctimony, he had always been
Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin Page 15