Book: Parliament of Whores

Overview

P. J. O'Rourke’s Parliament of Whores (1991) is a libertarian-leaning satire of the United States federal government that blends reportage, humor, and polemic. Drawing on magazine assignments during the late 1980s and the 1988 presidential campaign, O’Rourke tours the institutions, rituals, and absurdities of Washington to answer a plain question: What does government do, and why does it do it so badly? His answer is that sprawling bureaucracies, diffuse responsibility, and relentless interest-group pressure turn democratic governance into a muddle of good intentions, perverse incentives, and runaway costs.

How it investigates Washington

O’Rourke approaches the subject as a field reporter rather than a think-tank analyst. He sits through committee hearings, attends both parties’ political conventions, tags along with federal agents and local police, interviews congressional staffers, and visits program sites. By showing processes from the ground, budget markups, procurement rules, subsidies, social programs, he translates abstract policy into concrete scenes. He favors firsthand observation, barbed analogies, and punchline statistics that capture waste or incoherence more memorably than a spreadsheet.

Targets and case studies

Congress appears as a frenetic bazaar of demands where members are pulled by constituents, lobbyists, and party strategists while trying to dodge accountability. The federal budget becomes the master story: a mountain of numbers whose key feature is that nearly everything has a constituency and almost nothing has a steward. O’Rourke pokes at defense procurement and the mythology around specific “gold-plated” items, arguing that the real waste is structural, diffused oversight, labyrinthine requirements, and politically protected contractors, rather than a single comical invoice. He examines farm policy to show how subsidies reward overproduction and middle-class landowners more than struggling laborers. Housing and urban programs become examples of money meeting misaligned local incentives, where subsidized outcomes often disappoint the intended beneficiaries. The war on drugs is portrayed as a clash between moralistic laws and street realities that policing cannot easily fix. Campaigns and conventions, staged for television and donors, are shown as theater masking an insider negotiation over power.

Themes and argument

The central theme is that democratic government invites everyone to pursue their slice of the common pie while diffusing the costs so broadly that resistance is weak. This produces bipartisan complicity: neither party wants to anger beneficiaries, so policies accumulate like barnacles. O’Rourke admires the Constitution for fragmenting power, he treats gridlock as a feature that limits damage, but concludes that modern governance has overwhelmed these checks with complexity and permanent emergency. He is skeptical of both moral crusades and technocratic fixes, arguing for smaller, clearer government that does fewer things more predictably. Personal responsibility and markets fare better in his telling not because they are perfect but because their flaws are easier to see and correct than those of opaque bureaucracies.

Style and tone

The book’s appeal lies in its caustic wit and willingness to skewer every faction. O’Rourke’s jokes are often outrageous, but they serve reportage: he uses comedy to clarify incentives, unmask jargon, and puncture pieties. His narrator is not detached; he is impatient with pretension, sympathetic to ordinary taxpayers, and allergic to anything that sounds like a painless solution. The prose toggles between wisecracks and crisp explanations, making fiscal arcana and administrative law feel like scenes from a road novel.

Place in its moment

Published as deficits, scandals, and culture-war politics crowded the headlines, the book captured a late, Cold War cynicism about big government shared by readers across the spectrum. Its lasting message is not that officials are villains but that institutions encourage folly even when staffed by competent, well-meaning people. By the end, O’Rourke urges a modest ambition for the state: define a few core tasks, do them well, and stop promising what no government can deliver.