The Art of Poitical Insult

By Hugh Sidey

Presidential Aspirant Fritz Rollings last week referred to his fellow presidential aspirant John Glenn as "this joker." Among the political cognoscenti that may have been the second biggest story of the week, outranked only by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's electoral tidal wave. Invective can be hazardous on the hustings in these timorous days.

Speaker Tip O'Neill has called President Reagan "Herbert Hoover with a smile," and Reagan has branded Challenger Fritz Mondale "Vice President Malaise." But those were gentle epithets delivered with a velvet glove and a twinkling eye. Since we throw so many stones into television's glass house (Reagan dubbed ABC's Sam Donaldson "the Ayatullah of the White House press corps"), it should be mentioned that most political analysts believe the electronic medium has brought a higher level of behavior among the contenders for the White House. Lamentably, the entertainment level has declined.

Before Hollings levitated to the presidential level he had real flavor. He called David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, "a pathological finagler." In the debate over the MX, he roared at the opposition, "Dense pack is an appropriate name for more than just a missile configuration."

It is wonderful when language rises to the occasion. Back in 1970, Lexicographer William Safire delighted America with two verbal souffles: "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "pusillanimous pussyfooters."

Satire's delivery agent was Vice President Spiro Agnew, a nay boob. The souffles later collapsed in acrimony.

Edmund Morris, a Theodore Roosevelt biographer, reminds us that invective can sting and skewer, yet bring admiration for the pronouncer. He spoke at the Smithsonian Institution last month on T.R. as a writer, noting that Roosevelt indulged in the biting phrase for the sheer joy of it. "One often heard the undertone of Homeric chuckling," said Morris, when Roosevelt delivered himself of another polished gem, "as if, after all, he loved the fun of hating what he hated." Few people could stay angry at such artistry and boyishness.

Roosevelt called the President of Venezuela "a pithecanthropoid," according to Morris, and once referred to the lionized George Bernard Shaw as "a blue-rumped ape." Sir Mortimer Durand, His Majesty's Ambassador to the U.S. back then, was denounced as a fellow with "a mind that functions at six guinea-pig power." The Populist Senator William Peffer was immortalized as "a well-meaning, pinheaded, anarchistic crank, of hirsute and slab-sided aspect." That latter bit might make it a little difficult for the victim to throw off the effects with a laugh. Still, all of Morris' research on Roosevelt shows that deep down few adversaries could totally subdue affection for the Republican rouser.

One of Morris' favorite T.R. sallies was directed against members of the Populist Party. "That a man should change his clothes in the evening, that he should dine at any other hour than noon, impress these good people as being symptoms of depravity instead of merely trivial," snorted Roosevelt. "A taste for learning and cultivated friends, and a tendency to bathe frequently, cause in them the deepest suspicion."

The country has moved on since those days, but the point is made that digestible invective comes from intelligence, research and thought. Roosevelt, a magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, was president of the American Historical Association as well as of the U.S. He lectured learnedly at the Sorbonne and Oxford, may have read up to three books a day most of his adult life and wrote more than 18 million words. He is credited with such coinages as "hyphenated Americans," "clean as a hound's tooth," "weasel words," "the right stuff," "the lunatic fringe." No pusillanimous pussyfooter he. And, by the way, it was T.R. who came up with pussyfooting. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.