Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie

If we start electing presidents on the basis of their sexual purity, some real monsters will get into the White House.

The strategy worked like a charm, and in 1980 Jimmy Carter was swept away like offal by the “Reagan Revolution,” which ushered in eight years of berserk looting of the federal treasury and the economic crippling of the middle class. That was the eighties, folks. That was the feeding frenzy of the New Rich, who found themselves wallowing in excess profits as their maximum income tax rate got chopped down to 31 percent and who were welcomed like brothers in the White House at all hours of the day or night.

ROSS PEROT was the best thing that happened in American politics since Richard Nixon acquired a taste for gin. In both cases, the political dialogue of the day was enriched by spontaneous gibberish that entertained the wrong people and made the right ones question their faith.

NOT EVERYBODY is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal—like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it.

You have to be very mean to get a laugh on the campaign trail. There is no such thing as paranoia.

I had been up all night with my old friend Allen Ginsberg, the poet, and we had both slid into the abyss of whiskey madness and full-bore substance abuse. It was wonderful,

It was an educated fear of the coming shit-rain

I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Even now, more than 30 years later, I still judge people on the basis of whether they voted for Jack Kennedy in 1960, or for Richard Nixon...Those bastards are scarred forever, and I'm not. At least not for that. Hell, it was an honor to be able to vote against Richard Nixon - and it will be an honor on November 3 [1992] to vote against George Bush and everything he stands for.

Look what happened the last time a Republican president tried to fix a doomed national economy. Remember Herbert Hoover?

because it is a very elegant feeling to wake up in the morning and go down to your neighborhood polling place and come away feeling proud of the way you voted.

Losing in New Hampshire was usually permanent, and winning was a guaranteed fast ride to somewhere—maybe the White House—or at least a fiery exit. Probably soon, but so what?