Why Dogs Are Better Than Republicans: And Other Political Animals

This is another book review from Wolfie and Kansas, the boonie dogs from Toto, Guam. Jennifer Berman's "Why Dogs Are Better Than Republicans" has obvious strengths. The book is a collection of generally very cute cartoons that show, quite truthfully, why dogs are better than Republicans. In addition, inside the back cover there is a picture of the cartoonist with three good-looking dogs who seem quite content with her company, leading us to believe she must be a nice person, for a human.Despite these obvious strenghts, the book only tells part of the story. While we may be better than Republicans, we still sometimes find them preferable to Democrats. The Democrats are the party of more and bigger government. More government means more leash laws. When someone tells a boonie dog, "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you", they usually mean, "I'm from the dog pound and I'm here to neuter you." (To be fair, we should note that sometimes it is hard to tell the law-and-order Republicans from the Democrats on these issues. In the last election for mayor of Toto, both a left-wing Leninist Democrat and a right-wing Mussolinian Republican ran on platforms of rounding up stray dogs.)Putting aside human ideology, we dogs tend to divide human politicians into two groups. There are dog politicians, such as Fala's FDR, George Bush, and even ear-pulling LBJ. Then there are --grrrr--cat politicians, like Bill Clinton.Jennifer Berman criticizes Tricky Dick's cynical use of Checkers. However, her effort to use the popularity of dogs to advance the image of a party of leash-law-lovers and a cat-President is nearly as cynical. A three-page section on "Why Dogs Are Better Than Democrats" at the end of this book was not enough. While this was an entertaining book, it would have been better if the subject had been "Why Dogs Are Better Than All Politicians", or, better yet, "Why Dogs Are Better Than Humans"