What They Should Have Said

Here are my fantasies about what was said over the New Year's holiday, with inadequate acknowledgments to various contributors, some of whose words I adapted a bit:

New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick: "Nobody ever says, 'It's only a game' when his team is winning."

President Bush after being roasted at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner: "I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it."

Bill Clinton on his political skills: "Never do card tricks with the group you play poker with."

Sen. Hillary Clinton on her instinct for the jugular: "My politics are borrowed from Mike Tyson, who said, 'Everybody has a strategy until I hit them.' "

Bill Clinton on a mean-spirited attack on Sen. Barack Obama by one of his wife's top aides: "Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain."

Mitt Romney on his multiple shifts in policy: "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies it can invent."

Mike Huckabee on his unabashed conservatism: "Always drink upstream from the herd."

Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman on Democrats who didn't support his independent campaign: "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."

Paul Bremer on his role as head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority: "Anytime you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there's a 90 percent probability you will get it wrong."

President Bush on Congress's Democratic leadership: "They have delusions of adequacy."

The Democrats on the failure of intelligence in Iraq: "It is no use saying we are doing our best. You have to succeed in doing what is necessary."

Bill Clinton comparing his presidency with that of his successor: "If you look at them sequentially, you have to conclude that Darwin got it exactly backward."

Steve Jobs on merging Pixar with Disney: "A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."

European Union envoy Tony Blair to the Palestinian leadership: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

Any guest on TV talk shows: "Being on a panel with Bill O'Reilly is like going hunting with Dick Cheney."

Jennifer Aniston on being married to Brad Pitt: "I was married by a judge; I should have asked for a jury."

Tom Brokaw on retiring as anchor of NBC News: "I could have certainly slowed the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress."

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on the Republican majority: "Even if the majority agrees on an idiotic idea, it is still an idiotic idea."

Sen. John McCain on the immigration controversy: "The greatness of this country should be measured by the number of people trying to get in versus the number of people trying to get out."

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on the United Nations: "The U.N. has been as effective against war as foghorns have been against fog."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on sex education in California schools: "Let them teach it. If the schools teach sex the way they teach everything else, the kids will lose interest anyhow."

Jon Stewart on political comedy: "I don't approve of political jokes; I have seen too many of them get elected."

Rudy Giuliani's second wife: "My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn't."

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson: "It is not possible for this nation to be politically internationalist and economically isolationist. This is just as insane as asking one Siamese twin to high-dive while the other plays the piano."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: "Balancing the budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there."

The Democrats on taking control of Congress: "Don't open up a can of worms without knowing how to get the worms back in."

Former Sen. Fred Thompson on political campaigning: "If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain."

Mitt Romney on locating his campaign headquarters next to a Burger King: "The sign could read, 'Romney's Headquarters, Home of the Whopper.' "

Sen. Barack Obama on TV evangelists: "When God, who created the entire universe, decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will not use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle."

College freshman scripting an ad in his college newspaper: "Wanted—meaningful overnight relationship."