Politics & Power Quote by P. J. O'Rourke

O'Rourke lands the joke with the elegance of a barstool syllogism: you don't need a policy paper to understand that temptation plus capability equals trouble. The line works because it borrows a familiar, slightly grim American image - teenage boys with whiskey and car keys - and uses it as a moral shortcut. It's not a neutral comparison; it's a deliberate insult, turning "government" from a solemn institution into an impulsive actor with too much horsepower and too little judgment.

The specific intent is rhetorical sabotage. By framing public authority as adolescent recklessness, O'Rourke pre-loads any argument for expanding the state with suspicion. If the state is a teenager, then citizens are the anxious parents, and taxation becomes not a civic duty but an enabling behavior. It's libertarian persuasion disguised as a one-liner: the smallest government isn't just efficient; it's the only safe arrangement when power is inherently intoxicating.

The subtext is cynicism about human nature, especially when shielded from direct consequences. Teenage boys are the cultural stand-in for risk-taking without foresight; bureaucracies, in this worldview, are similarly insulated by distance, procedure, and the ability to externalize costs. The metaphor also sneaks in a gendered assumption about recklessness - part of O'Rourke's era and comedic persona - which makes the punchline sharper for some and dated for others.

Context matters: O'Rourke wrote as a journalist-comic in the late Cold War and post-1960s backlash tradition, when distrust of Washington was both ideological and fashionable. The line isn't trying to be fair. It's trying to be memorable enough to outlive the rebuttal.