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

The joke lands because it treats politics like a late-night infomercial, then calmly points out the punchline: if government had to play by consumer-protection rules, it would fail the legal sniff test. P. J. O'Rourke is doing what he does best here: laundering a libertarian critique through deadpan comedy, so the reader laughs first and agrees second.

The specific intent is to reframe “government” not as a civic ideal but as a shoddy commodity: overpriced, overpromised, and protected from refunds. “Selling it” invokes advertising claims, fine print, bait-and-switch tactics, and the asymmetry of power between seller and buyer. You can opt out of a bad brand of cereal; you can’t easily opt out of a state. That’s the subtextual sting: consent in democracy is partial, coerced by necessity and enforced by monopoly. The line suggests government survives not because it delights customers, but because it compels captive ones.

Context matters. O’Rourke came up in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam hangover and wrote through the Reagan-era boom in anti-government rhetoric, when distrust of bureaucracies and regulatory failures became a cultural mood. The irony is sharpened by the fact that consumer law is itself a government creation; the quote quietly admits the system it mocks is also the only thing that could police its own sales pitch.

It works because it’s cynical without being obscure: one sentence turns civics into commerce, and commerce into an indictment.