Funny Friendship Quote by Lyn Nofziger

It lands like a barbed one-liner, but it’s really a tiny political autobiography. Lyn Nofziger was a Reagan loyalist and operator, the kind of insider whose job is access, message discipline, and keeping the boss insulated from the messy human friction that politics generates. So when he says he’s “not a social friend” of the Reagans “by their choice and by mine,” he’s performing a controlled break: not exile, not betrayal, just mutually agreed distance. That phrasing matters. It protects him from seeming shut out while also asserting agency, the currency of any Washington player.

Then he spikes the whole thing with “They don’t drink enough.” It’s a joke with two blades. On the surface, it’s a wink about temperament: the Reagans, famously careful and image-managed, are too sober in every sense to be anyone’s good-time pals. Underneath, it’s an old-school operative’s critique of a moralized, sanitized political style. Drinking here isn’t just booze; it’s shorthand for looseness, camaraderie, the backroom humanity where deals and loyalties are forged. By implying the Reagans don’t partake, Nofziger suggests they’re not built for intimate, unguarded friendship - they’re built for roles.

It also functions as plausible deniability. If you’re going to admit you’re not close to a powerful couple, you wrap it in humor so it reads as personality, not politics. The line flatters and needles at once: they’re disciplined; they’re dull. That’s Washington wit doing real work.