Politicians say the darndest things: Pelosi, Edwards, Palin, PEBO
More than a few years ago, one of the most exciting things about the end-of-year holiday season was that annually photographed visit with the Main Man, the guy in the red suit from the Coca-Cola ad. Somehow it never occurred to ask why the big guy chose the same downtown department store every year.
Anyway, one of 
the annual highlights of the holiday season now is Howard Mortman's eagerly awaited list of the Top 10 Funniest Political Quotes of the Year. (Not always funny in the "ha-ha" sense.)
Howard's a pretty funny fellow himself, but in this semi-annual post, he gives us some of the best worst lines of this historic political year.
Mike Huckabee asked what squirrel tastes like:
"It tastes like squirrel."
San Francisco's own House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking in tongues:
“I have always loved longitude. I love latitude; it’s in the stars. But longitude, it’s about time. ... Time and clocks and all the rest of that have always been a fascination for me.”
Former senator, former vice presidential candidate, former presidential candidate and, now, former politician John Edwards pathetically excusing his extramarital affair with a campaign videographer months after admitting it to his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, but denying it in public:
“Can I explain to you what happened? First of all, it happened during a period after she was in remission from cancer.”
Chris Matthews, alleged journalist, admitting he has something running up his leg:
“It’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”
We won't spoil Howard's post by printing them all. There's no Hillary Clinton and, astoundingly, no Ron Paul.
But Howard has got all the other big names in there -- John McCain, Sarah Palin, President-elect Barack Obama (now known as PEBO), even Joe Whosis from Delaware, who was supposed to be the new vice president but has gone missing since the election. And atop the list, Big Bill Clinton.
You can read the whole list over here. But now, what's left to open on Christmas morning?
--Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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