Una pluma genial

Algunas perlas del GENIO de PJ O'Rourke, en su Letter to Our European Friends:

America is in the midst of an all-important electoral campaign. But, talking to Europeans, I've discovered that there is puzzlement and misinformation on your continent about what's happening on ours. Europeans feel an understandable confusion when faced with a political system consisting of two houses of Congress and a White House, and nobody is home in any of them.

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay.

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans, race and religion. You, of course, don't have any religion. Except every now and then someone who came to Europe lately and is a Muslim blows himself to bits. But I understand that you have EU funding to address these social problems and help Muslims build bombs that release fewer pollutants and less carbon dioxide, reducing the threat of global warming.

After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He's still here in the United States. The majority of Americans are Christians, and Christians can be divided into two kinds, the kind who think you should get Jesus and the kind who think Jesus is going to get you. Mike Huckabee is one of the latter. Then there are the Mormons such as Mitt Romney who believe some unusual things — things that no sensible European like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Benito Mussolini, Karl Marx, Emanuel Swedenborg, or Cherie Blair would ever believe.

At the moment Republicans seem inclined to John McCain. Everyone loves John McCain. Everyone respects John McCain. He's tough. He's consistent. He's wrong. Not that I personally agree with you Europeans that John is wrong, but the voters do. John thinks the war in Iraq is a good idea. The electorate doesn't. John's campaign slogan is "Strong and Wrong."

Mitt Romney is supposed to be my own type of candidate, a true conservative. But Mitt was governor of Massachusetts. This is like applying to be pope and listing your prior job experience as "Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem."

Rudy Giuliani is a wonderful person to have around during a tragedy. His campaign promise is that there will be a tragedy every week.

As for Fred Thompson, he didn't have much impact. Yes, he's a Republican who was seen on TV a lot. But so was Scooter Libby.

Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a — no offense — European, then whack.

John Edwards is a personal injury lawyer, the sort of fellow who covers North Carolina with billboards reading, "Y'all May Have Been Malpracticed on by a Doctor and Not Even Know It. Call (800) S-H-Y-S-T-E-R." One of the remaining virtues of European civilization is that you aren't overrun with his ilk. John Edwards should go sue Krispy Kreme doughnuts for making his supporters too fat to get into the voting booths.

This leaves the Democrats with Hillary Clinton. She's going to reform America's health care system. Memo to Hillary: You already reformed America's health care system, 15 years ago. Just the outline of Hillary's 1993 health care plan was 1,400 pages long, almost as long as that equally successful reform document, the EU constitution.

Many political analysts say that the failure of Hillary's health care plan almost destroyed Bill Clinton's first term. You'll recall that Bill Clinton had to seek help from a different woman to almost destroy his second term.

But no matter who is elected America's next president — whether Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or even Ron Paul — it is important that Europeans be reassured that ordinary Americans will not change the way they think about Europe. They will continue to think they aren't sure where it is on the map.