Editing 79-08-A7 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Conservative columnist James J. ("Jack") Kilpatrick and one-time liberal
Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy may seem like unlikely collaborators, but it
turns out they are good friends. One night a few months ago, sitting by the fire
in Jack's home in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, they got to talking and
were inspired to write what may be the season's funniest book, A Political Bestiary.
As they say in the foreward, "During the course of a pleasant evening, as the
flames leaped up and the bourbon went down, the two naturalists spoke of the strange
creatures they had seen in the thickets of politics and in the seas of language."
Late in the evening they telephoned Jeff MacNelly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
editorial cartoonist and got his agreement to illustrate their book about these
strange creatures. A Political Bestiary begins with The Mandate and ends with the
Vanishing Milieu and, along the way, you will encounter such beasts as The Viable
Alternative, The Mounting Crisis, the Running Gamut, the Leaping Quantum, The
Gathering Momentum and many others.

Here is a sampling of their description of The Mandate: "Mandates come in as
many varieties as finches, warblers, sparrows and Southern politicians. They are
generally divided into Greater Mandates and Lesser Mandates. Among the Greater
Mandates are the Impressive Mandate and the Overwhelming Mandate. Greater Mandates
usually are discovered almost immediately after elections, gamboling about the White
House lawn. They appear like tree frogs in early March or old friends after a
victory at the polls." Once you have seen MacNelly's drawings of two Mandates you'll
be able to spot one coming forever after.

Here are the two political zoologists on a strange fish called The Bloated
Bureaucracy: "The species is almost always accompanied by its adjective ... Bloat is
no laughing matter; a bloated government has serious digestive problems. The more
it eats, the more it wants; the more it wants, the more it eats. The Bloated
Bureaucracy has a life span that ranges somewhere between the infinite and the
eternal."

Next comes The Untouchable Incumbent, shown clinging to the trunk of a tall
tree. About him, the authors say, "Today incumbents feed on the juiciest leaves
high on the tree, their diet consisting principally of choice prerogatives,
traditional perquisites, special privileges and fringe benefits. On such a rich
diet, with their tree-parking places carefully reserved, incumbents tend to build
up heavy layers of fat just below their quill-protected skin. This comfortable
blubber is called a pension."

That's just a sampling. You'll have to get a copy of A Political Bestiary to
enjoy the rest. I have a hunch you'll have as much fun reading it as Messrs.
Kilpatrick, McCarthy and MacNelly had putting it together. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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