A Couple of Quotes

I was recently directed to a pair of really good books by Janet Tashjian. Both books are about a teenager who uses an anonymous blog to change the world. He posts under the pseudonym "Larry." Thus, it is no big surprise that the books are titled The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry.

In Vote for Larry, the protagonist is running for president (a new amendment is passed to allow 18-year-olds to hold public office), and the book is full of really good political stuff. In particular, I found two quotes that open sections of the book. I'm not sure if these are in fact real quotes (I don't want to plug this much text into a search engine), but they are as follows:

"It is we who have squandered the public trust. We who have, time and again, is full public view placed our personal and partisan interests before the national interest, earning the public's contempt for our poll-driven policies, our phony posturing, the lies we can spin, and the damage control we substitue for progress. It is we who are the defenders of a campaign finance system that is nothing less than an elaborate influence-peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder"
-Senator John McCain

Pretty good stuff, eh? I'm not sure if these are actual qoutes, becasue the book is really, really obvious fiction. At one point, the protagonist's ticket has one third of the votes, of a 90%+ voter turnout, against BUSH AND KERRY. Now, I know for damn sure we didn't have 90% turnout, so the quotes are a bit suspect. You can look them up if you want, though. Here's the other one:

"Democratic power is never given; it always has to be taken, then aggressively defended, and retaken when it slips from our hands, for the moneyed powers relentlessly press to gain supremacy and assert their private will over the majority. Today, our gift of democracy is endangered not only by military might threatening a sudden, explosive coup but by the stealth of corporate lawyers and politicians, seizing a peice of self-government from us here, then another peice from over there, quietly installing an elitist regime issue by issue, law by law, place by place, with many citizens unaware that their people's authority is slipping away." -Jim Hightower

Comments, please, and read the books if you get the chance.