Bill Maher

And having been the Grand Poobah for three years, it’s a little late to be selling yourself as some fish-out-of-water cowboy visiting the big city on assignment. You’re not McCloud, you’re the grandson of a senator and the son of a president and CIA director. For 15 of the last 22 years you’ve had a key to the White House. The last thing that happened in Washington without the Bushes getting a piece of it was Marion Barry’s crack habit. “The Exorcist” happened in Georgetown, but Satan had to run it by Jim Baker first.

So knock off the regular-guy act — and by the way, that also goes for John Forbes Kerry, the other white meat. Two Skull and Bones preppies, these guys are, from Nantucket and Kennebunkport, who use the word “summer” as a verb and probably had monogrammed beer bongs in college.

Please, John Kerry: Stop rolling up your sleeves at campaign rallies like you’re about to man a register at Costco. You’re a Boston Brahmin who married not one but two eccentric heiresses — you’re not Joe Sixpack, you’re Claus von Bulow. I think your current wife is great, but hello, she inherited the Heinz fortune! She’s the ketchup lady! — which explains why sometimes he’s gotta smack her on the bottom to get her to come.

Look, fellas, we’ve got almost eight months till the election. That’s a long time to hold in your gut. To pretend you’re something you’re not. Let’s just be real and admit that finally, and unfortunately, true class warfare has come to America.

Yale class of ’66 vs. Yale class of ’68.

Karl Rove described Obama as “the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by.” Unlike George Bush, who’s the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous ass, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear. One of McCain’s ads casts Obama as “the one,” implying he thinks he’s the Messiah. Good, maybe he can raise McCain from the dead.

It doesn’t matter to Karl Rove that his country club characterization is fictitious, it’s the role that Obama must play if the party of plutocrats is going to win over the little guy. Over and over at this convention we heard about the new put-upon victim in our society, the person in America, like Sarah Palin, who’s constantly mocked because they’re from a … small town! Governor Yup Yup’s got ‘em all riled up about being disrespected.

Barack Obama can’t help it if he’s a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you’re a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That’s why George Bush is president. And that’s where the McCain camp gets its campaign strategy: Paint Obama as cocky and arrogant and wait for America to vote him off, like the black guy in every reality show. A black president? Half of Pennsylvania isn’t ready for black quarterbacks. Forget Obama, they think Will Smith needs to be taken down a peg.

And finally: As for “country first,” you know who’s putting country first? I am, by supporting Obama, because a victory this fall for the McCain-Mooseburger ticket would make my job in the next four years very, very easy.

This week — as every week — all the Republican candidates talked about was who was toughest in the war on terror. While the country’s most populous state literally burned. The Democrats, as usual, said nothing, because they didn’t want to offend fire.

The Republicans, including the scaremonger in chief, sell themselves as protectors of our safety. But since they’re all, except for McCain, armchair warriors, they’re only comfortable protecting us from fears they made up. Like the way Iran is itching for a war with the United States now. Ahmadinejad is pure evil! Terror has a new name, and it’s nearly unpronounceable.

At the Republican debate this week, Mike Huckabee said, “Islamofascism is the greatest threat we ever faced.” Really? More than the Nazis? And the Russians? And the Redcoats?

In his latest ad, Mitt Romney warns eerily that Muslim jihadists want to establish an Islamic caliphate covering the whole world, including America.

And I thought the people scared of gays and Mexicans were paranoid. Islamic terrorists taking over America? They can barely get across the monkey bars. Our defense budget is $600 billion a year, they’re using guns they took off a dead Soviet in 1981 — I think we can hold Charleston.

We’re the most powerful nation on earth with the largest economy and the best military, and we’re made to act the fool by a few thousand cave dwellers who still put out their video on VHS.

And that’s because over the last seven years, because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush, we’ve become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don’t think we can get anything right anymore. We can’t take care of our own citizens after a hurricane, or plan for our wars, or maintain our infrastructure, and our celebrity rehab facilities obviously aren’t working at all.

Some people looked at this fire and saw not a dangerous phenomenon brought on by man’s activities and requiring a scientific solution, but a cleansing catharsis sent by God to punish liberals. Even though it mostly burned Orange County.

As a species, we’re failing at survival trick No. 1: Prioritize the threats. Environmental catastrophe will visit all of us in the coming decades, in one way or another, and when it does I hope someone like … oh, I don’t know, Lou Dobbs, says to himself, “Hmm, maybe if I was going to spend my whole career obsessing about one issue — it should have been global warming. The skin just fell off my face, and it turns out that really wasn’t the fault of a Mexican.”

A reporter in Iowa asked Obama why he doesn’t wear the pin and Obama explained that, to him, wearing the pin had come to seem like a “substitute for true patriotism.” Bravo, Senator. And then, in yet another shining example of why the media is part of the problem, ABC’s Claire Shipman said, “TMI, too much information — all he had to say was, ‘Don’t judge me by what I wear, move on.’ He played into the idea that he’s not ready for prime time.”

What, schoolgirl? “Too much information?” What is she, 12? This is typical press hypocrisy — they say they want somebody who doesn’t give pat political answers, but when they get one, they call him a loser. They say they don’t like safe robots like Hillary, but they create conditions where only that species can survive. And they give cover to people like Sean Hannity, who reported on “no pin” gate and then had to call a doctor because his fake outrage hard-on lasted longer than 72 hours.

Of course, the Republicans are the party of Mark Foley and the Rev. Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and countless other closeted homosexuals, so their fixation on jewelry is understandable, but still … the flag is just a symbol. You’re getting pissy about a brooch, you drama queens, one that was probably made in China. It’s probably leaking poison lead on you right now.

At least that would be some sacrifice, because let’s be honest: this generation doesn’t do real sacrifice or even pay for our own wars. That’s what grandkids are for! No, we do flag pins and bumper stickers. And not even bumper stickers. Bumper magnets. Because stickers are tough to get off, and we may change our mind about never forgetting.

When I see the little flag right here, the first thing I think is, you voted for, and still like, George Bush, the man who has gotten more troops unnecessarily killed and maimed by failing to plan for their mission, by pushing their units to the breaking point, by letting his corporate enablers like Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater rape and pillage not just the Iraqis, but our own army.

Can you imagine how apoplectic the flag-pin people would be if these same transgressions against the military were being made by Bill Clinton? Oh, who am I kidding? They’d still be obsessing about the blow job.

As usual, we’ve been sucked into a phony controversy about who said what and how it hurt George W. Bush’s feelings. Because when you hurt George W. Bush you hurt America’s feelings, and when you hurt America’s feelings, you hurt the troops. And when that happens, Tinkerbell’s light goes out and she dies.

The Republican outrage machine is always invoking secret rules that liberals didn’t know they broke. And apparently when you get to be president, they give you an employee’s handbook titled “So You’re Leader of the Free World — Now What?” It tells you about the nuclear codes, where your parking space is, and to not talk smack about other presidents. But I was up all night on Wikipedia doing an exhaustive study of former presidents, and while other presidents have sucked in their own individual ways, Bush is like a smorgasbord of suck. He combines the corruption of Warren G. Harding, the abuse of power of Richard Nixon and the warmongering of James K. Polk.

I mean, who would you rank lower than George W. Bush? Nixon got in trouble for illegally wiretapping Democratic headquarters; Bush is illegally wiretapping the entire country. Nixon opened up relations with the Chinese; Bush let them poison your dog. Herbert Hoover sat on his ass through four years of calamity, but he was an actual engineer. If someone told him about global warming, he would have understood it before the penguins caught on fire. Ulysses Grant was a miserable drunk, but at least he didn’t trade booze for Jesus and embolden the snake handlers — he did the honorable thing and stayed a miserable drunk. Grant let his cronies loot the republic, but he won his civil war.

For some inexplicable reason Republicans have taken to comparing Bush to Harry Truman — a comparison that would make sense only if Harry Truman had A) started World War II and B) lost World War II. Harding sucked, but he once said, “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.” So at least he knew he sucked. He never walked offstage like Bush does after one of his embarrassing press conferences with a look on his face like, “Nailed it.” Bush still acts like every failure is just a friend he hasn’t met yet.

Now, is it possible for a future president to perform as badly as Bush has? I suppose, theoretically, if we elect someone totally off the wall, like R. Kelly, or the reanimated corpse of Ted Williams, or Rudy Giuliani … But let’s be honest, we would have been better off over the past six years if the Oval Office had been occupied by an orangutan with a Magic 8-Ball. And that’s why it’s so depressing that when the right-wing noise machine pretended to get upset at what Jimmy Carter said, he did what Democrats always do and backed down. He said his remarks were careless and misrepresented and the sun was in his eyes and his hearing aid went out and he was molested by a clergyman.

They confronted him, and he took it all back. Which is what Democrats do. Why couldn’t he have just said, “No, I meant what I said. And speaking as the first citizen of Habitat for Humanity, let me take out my toolbox and build you a house where we can meet and you can blow me.” If a Democrat who’s out of office and 100 years old can’t speak out, what chance do we have for the ones who are in office? Like the ones who are in Congress now who, emboldened by widespread public approval of their plan to bring the troops home … this week abandoned that plan. You see, you don’t get to become the worst president ever without a little help from the other side.

Except for one thing: We’re not first. America isn’t ranked anywhere near first in anything except military might and snotty billionaires. The country that is ranked No. 1 in healthcare, for example, is France. The World Health Organization ranks America at 37 in the world — not two, or five — 37, in between Costa Rica and Slovenia, which are both years away from discovering dentistry.

Yet an American politician could not survive if he or she uttered the simple, true statement, “France has a better healthcare system than us, and we should steal it.” Because here, simply dismissing an idea as French passes for an argument. John Kerry? Can’t vote for him — he looks French. Yeah, as opposed to the other guy, who just looked stupid.

I know, if God had wanted us to learn from the Enlightenment, he wouldn’t have given us Sean Hannity.

And I’m not saying France is better than America. Because I assume you’ve already figured that out by now. I don’t want to be French, I just want to take what’s best from the French. Stealing, for your own self-interest — Republicans should love this idea. Taking what’s best from the French: You know who else did that? The Founding Fathers. Hate to sink your toy boat, Fox News, but the Founding Fathers, the ones you say you revere, were children of the French Enlightenment, and fans of it, and they turned it into a musical called the Constitution of the United States. And they did a helluva job, so good it has been said that it was written by geniuses so it could be run by idiots. But the current administration is putting that to the test. The Founding Fathers were erudite, well-read, European-thinking aristocrats — they would have had nothing in common with, and no use for, an ill-read xenophobic bumpkin like George W. Bush.

The American ideas of individuality, religious tolerance and freedom of speech came directly out of the French Enlightenment — but, shhh, don’t tell Alabama. Voltaire wrote “men are born equal” before Jefferson was wise enough to steal it.

Countries are like people — they tend to get smarter as they get older. Noted military genius Donald Rumsfeld famously dismissed France as part of Old Europe, but the French are … what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah, “mature.” We think they’re rude and snobby, but maybe that’s because they’re talking to us.

For example, France just had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote. Eighty-five percent turned out. The only thing 85 percent of Americans ever voted on was Sanjaya.

Maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem cell research or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it’s not a drawback. There is no Pierre Six-pack who can be fooled by childish wedge issues. And the electorate doesn’t vote for the guy they want to have a croissant with. Nor do they care about the candidate’s private lives: In the current race, Ségolène Royal has four kids but never bothered to get married. And she’s a socialist. In America, if a Democrat even thinks you’re calling him a liberal he immediately grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill something.

The conservative candidate is married, but he and his wife live apart and lead separate lives. They aren’t asked about it in the media, and the people are OK with it, for the same reason the people are OK with nude beaches: because they’re not a nation of 6-year-olds who scream and giggle if they see pee-pee parts. They have weird ideas about privacy. They think it should be private. In France, everyone has a mistress. Even mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters, “I’m no good at multitasking.”

France has its faults — the country has high unemployment, a nasty immigrant problem and all that ridiculous accordion music. But its healthcare is the best, it’s not dependent on Mideast oil, it has the lowest poverty rate and the lowest income-inequality rate among industrialized nations, and it’s the greenest, with the lowest carbon dumping and the lowest electricity bill.

France has 20,000 miles of railroads that work. We have the trolley at the mall that takes you from Pottery Barn to the Gap. It has bullet trains. We have bullets. France has public intellectuals. We have Dr. Phil. And France invented sex during the day, the ménage &agrave trois, lingerie and the tongue.

And the French are not fat. Can’t we just admit we could learn something from them?