"Somebody once said that a politician is a person who can talk for hours and never actually say anything. If that's true, Hideo Kojima could run for government and be emperor of the universe by mid-afternoon."
A kid-friendlier version of the Sleazy Politician, where the main purpose of elected officials is to bore the audience half to death with grand-sounding, but empty rhetoric. Frequently involves malapropers, apologies for their lack of expertise in speaking, and (broken) promises of being short and to the point.
Subtrope of The Bore. Sister trope of Old Windbag and Boring Religious Service. Compare Character Filibuster. Often a popular trait of The Generalissimo and the Pompous Political Pundit.
Examples:
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Advertising
- An early 1980s 7-Eleven ad (unfortunately not available at the moment) from the features members of a marching band fleeing the rambling speech of the town mayor to stop by the convenience store, followed by much singing and dancing.
Comic Books
- Asterix: The Helvetian assembly in "Asterix in Switzerland" consists of one chieftain making a speech and every other one sleeping deeply. When they switch out, the new one even says "I will be brief…"
- Justice Society of America infamously portrayed Adolf Hitler as a ranting and raving buffoon whose rise to power was attributed to a Cult of Personality and his charisma more than any actual merits; he was to be unable to fully comprehend the consequences of his own actions, making one wonder how this fool came to lead one of the most powerful armies in the world and get his hands on The Spear of Destiny.
- Lucky Luke:
- At the end of "Fingers", the mayor wishes to say a few words. Cut to several hours later, where he's still talking.
- Another has Luke help build a bridge across the Mississippi which isn't completed by the time the opening ceremony comes around. Luke tells the governor to stall for time, which he does by announcing that on this day praise must be given to the Lord, and starts reading from the Bible, page 1. The bridge is finished by the time he gets to Job.
- Spirou & Fantasio. The mayor of Champignac is widely feared for his entirely improvised and metaphor-breaking digressions.
Films — Live-Action
- Lincoln. On the day of the vote, the speaker tells the audience they will now briefly recap the proposed amendment. Everyone bursts out laughing on "briefly".
- The Witches of Eastwick. A newspaper editor is giving a long (multipage) speech which is interrupted when the title witches inadvertently cause a rainstorm.
Jokes
- Russian Humor: "Is it possible to wrap an elephant in one single Pravda newspaper?" — "Yes, if there's the full text of one of Brezhnev's speeches in it." The spoken version of such a speech would be even longer and more boring since Brezhnev was an old man and spoke very slowly.
- In another joke, Brezhnev is on the third hour of his speech when the KGB identify and arrest a CIA agent in the audience. When Brezhnev asks how they were able to Spot the Imposter, the KGB reply, "Comrade General Secretary, as you yourself have often stated, the enemy never sleeps."
Literature
- Dave Barry once mentioned the real reason Cuban troops were found all over the world in the seventies and eighties was that it was preferable to staying in Cuba, where they have to listen to extremely long speeches.
- Paths of the Perambulator: When Clothahump wants to summon Nothing, he has his familius start reading a politician's campaign speech that's long-winded, boring, and full of empty promises AKA nothing.
Live-Action TV
- The "Young Tory of the Year" sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie plays on the same idea, with competitors simply rattling off Conservative buzzwords of the Thatcher era for as long as the competition will let them. They're time-limited because it's a Serious Competition, but the clear expectation is that the Young Tory of the Year will be fully expected to be able to hold forth in that manner indefinitely.
- One Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch has an interviewed man claim that "Speaking as Conservative candidate, I just drone on and on and on, never letting anyone else get in a word in edgeways, until I start frothing at the mouth and falling over backwards." He then proceeds to do just that.
- Our Miss Brooks: The Mayor of Madison appears in "Public Property on Parade". A big of a windbag, a least he is honest. His predecessor, Mayor Rimson, heard in the radio episode "Student Government Day", was a Sleazy Politician in league with gangsters.
Music
- The Capitol Steps parodied Bill Clinton's tendency to give long-winded speeches in "Don't Stop Talkin' Until Tomorrow."
Newspaper Comics
- Senator Snort from George Lichty's Grin And Bear It comics has a reputation for filibusters. One gag had a colleague remark that Senator Snort still has the floor, even though there's a new President in office.
- In Shoe; Senator Batson D. Belfry displays this trope on several occasions; particularly during press conferences with Shoe and the Perfesser.
Radio
- Bleak Expectations:
- Pip Bin spends seven hours trying to lecture an MP on his poor behaviour. It's only after those seven hours he cops to the fact the man is dead. Years later, he justifies this ignorance on the grounds the pale features, glassy eyes and utter immobility are all normal attributes of an MP.
- Later, in series 4, Pip travels to the most boring place in all of Britain, the House of Lords, as part of a plot to have a near-death experience so he can rescue his wife from the underworld. He's in luck, as Baron Arid Words is giving a lecture on evaporation. Pip soon finds himself bored to death.
Baron Words: Evaporating at five imperial units per decade, drone drone, mutter, soft hum of tedious words…
- Senator Beauregard Claghorn from The Fred Allen Show.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons adventure OA6 Ronin Challenge. During the opening ceremonies of the Kumite tournament, the contestants march onto a field and take martial arts stances. A series of long-winded dignitaries then begin to give lengthy welcoming speeches. This is actually a Secret Test: the authorities are trying to weed out unqualified participants. Any of the contestants who moves even slightly during the speeches is immediately disqualified.
Theater
- Hamilton:
- The titular character eventually becomes prone to long-winded speeches once given a political position following the revolution. Lampshaded.
Burr: [Hamilton] talks for six hours! The convention is listless!
- As seen in The Trial of Levi Weeks, Alexander being this even when practicing law.
Hamilton: Gentlemen of the jury, I’m curious, bear with me
Are you aware that we’re making hist’ry?
This is the first murder trial of our brand-new nation
The liberty behind
Deliberation—
I intend to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
With my assistant counsel—
Burr: Co-counsel. Hamilton, sit down!
Our client Levi Weeks is innocent. Call your first witness.
That’s all you had to say!
Hamilton: Okay! ... One more thing—
Burr: Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?
- The titular character eventually becomes prone to long-winded speeches once given a political position following the revolution. Lampshaded.
- Hamlet: Polonius, King Claudius' counselor, is prone to being long-winded. Lampshaded when he says "Brevity is the soul of wit" at the end of one of his rambling speeches.
Video Games
- Disco Elysium: Sunday Friend is a high-level government official for Moralism International. He preaches the virtues of Moralism through extremely long strings of meaningless jargon, and deflects any other questions about himself, the murder, or what he's doing in the apartment of a gay student in one of the city's poorest districts.
- Mass Effect 1: After rescuing the party from an erupting volcano, Joker tells Shepard that he wants a medal for his actions. The paragon response it to tell him that if he gets a medal, it's going to require a ceremony where a bunch of politicians are going to give long, boring speeches. He quickly agrees that no medal is worth that.
Visual Novels
- In Marco & the Galaxy Dragon, the Mayor is introduced giving a speech about how she wants to make Gold Cord into the kind of town where you can feel comfortable eating ice cream even in a crowded city and starts going off on a tangent about the ice cream parlor where she bought the ice cream cone that she was eating during the speech. The press then interrupt to ask her what the hell she’s talking about.
Western Animation
- An episode of Pinky and the Brain sees the duo encounter Algore the donkey, who is full of so much hot air that they can ride him like a hot air balloon.
- Not a politician per se, but when SpongeBob SquarePants was chosen hall monitor, he gave a long, boring acceptance speech (which includes a line from an equally long speech from a famous hall monitor). By the time he's finished, class is over without him actually performing his actual duties.
Real Life
- British prime minister Arthur Balfour was noted for being this, mostly because opposition leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman was regarded as a much more natural speaker by comparison, resulting in Balfour constantly giving long, interminable speeches in parliament to diminish the Liberals' speaking time.
- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was infamous for doing this, his longest speech on record in Cuba clocking up seven hours and 10 minutes at the 1986 Communist Party Congress.
- This is one of a few reasons why Chicago has been nicknamed "The Windy City": Chicagoan politicians are infamous for being corrupt and "long-winded".
- Former Tennessee Governor Frank G. Clement (who was the youngest governor in the state's history when he was first elected in 1952 at just 32 years of age) had been invited to deliver the keynote address at the 1956 Democratic Convention in Chicago (where Clement was also considered a possible Vice-Presidential candidate). Clement, who had been known for delivering fiery stump speeches in his previous campaigns, delivered a strident speech that included jabs at President Eisenhower of "staring down the green fairways of indifference" (a poke at Ike's love of golf), called Vice President Nixon the "vice hatchet man", and pledged not to crucify American farmers on a "Republican cross of gold" (alluding to William Jennings Bryan and his famous "Cross of Gold" speech 60 years earlier), punctuated by frequent intonations of "How long, America? O, how long?" The speech, relatively well received at the time, has since appeared in lists of both the best and worst convention speeches of the television age; Clement got passed over by Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II and the Democratic delegates in favor of fellow Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver, a senator who had challenged Stevenson in the primaries. However, among those who thought well of the speech included Bill Clinton (mentioned belownote ) as well as future Georgia Governor and Senator Zell Miller.note
- This was how much of America was first introduced to Bill Clinton.
- Clinton was first brought in to deliver the keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention where he was supposed to place presidential nominee Michael Dukakis' name in official nomination. Instead, Clinton went on a 32-minute speech, well past the 20-minute time limit, resulting in many of the delegates showing their boredom as Clinton droned on
. In the end, the only applause Clinton would get was when he said "In closing".
- The 1992 Democratic Convention saw then-nominee Clinton's speech run for 53 minutes.note
- Averted in his first inaugural address, whose brevity at just under 15 minutes Clinton made a joke.
- Clinton was first brought in to deliver the keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention where he was supposed to place presidential nominee Michael Dukakis' name in official nomination. Instead, Clinton went on a 32-minute speech, well past the 20-minute time limit, resulting in many of the delegates showing their boredom as Clinton droned on
- Boston Mayor Big Jim Curley famously said that his rhetorical technique was to tell the audience first what he was going to tell them, then tell it to them, then tell them what he had told them. Do note that this is often used in essay writing tips as the proper way to meet page length minimums.
- Played with by Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker, who in public could give quite powerful, incisive speeches. In private, however, he was notorious for going on seemingly endless anecdotes about his having previously known Winston Churchill, with his subjecting the newly-elected John F. Kennedy to one of these anecdotes causing JFK to call him a "boring son-of-a-bitch" to his wife Jackie, and helped spur the neighbouring leaders' infamously terrible working relationship.
- Third-world dictators during the Cold War in general were noted to be fond of this trope. One of the most egregious abusers has to be Kenneth Kaunda, first president of Zambia, who would not only make several speeches running up to five hours long every year, but would also broadcast them on the country's lone television channel. Suffice it to say, those Zambians who did have access to television were not pleased.
- In Older Than Radio days, live speeches and debates were a form of public entertainment. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas spoke for 90 minutes each during their famous debates. Also, the now stereotypically bombastic oration was necessary before the invention of loudspeakers. That began to change with Lincoln making such an impression with his Gettysburg Address taking just two minutes that the featured speaker of the occasion, former Secretary of State and noted orator Edward Everett, praised him in writing for an eloquently concise speech. Incidentally, Everett spoke for a little more than two hours at the same event.
- V. K. Krishna Menon's 1957 speech defending India's actions in Kashmir is listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest speech delivered at the United Nations. Menon almost made it to the eight-hour mark when he collapsed on the podium (it served as both a sincere defense and a filibuster to prevent the Security Council from passing a resolution condemning India's actions).
- The longest speech at the General Assembly was given by Fidel Castro (who else) in 1960, clocking in at four hours and 29 minutes. It was said that instead of listening, the delegates spent most of the speech's run time carefully planning out everyone's lunch schedule so that too many people didn't accidentally leave at once and break quorum.
- A distant runner-up to Castro at the General Assembly is Muammar Gaddafi's incomprehensible 2009 address, which consisted of 100 minutes of pure gobbledygook. One of the interpreters passed out from exhaustion. The Assembly generally adheres to a strict 15-minute time limit for its speakers, but in the cases of Castro and Gaddafi, trying to enforce that was judged to be more trouble than it was worth.
- As a bit of subversion, Josef Stalin generally gave brief speeches (except for the Central Committee reports, which are by tradition quite detailed). Unfortunately, the speeches are liberally sprinkled with applause cues. As everyone's too afraid to be the first person to stop applauding, each round of ovations can last a good ten minutes.note Stalin also knew full well that his own voice was rather high-pitched and hence not particularly "dangerous" or authoritative-sounding. This, coupled with his strong Georgian accent, was one of the reasons he comparatively rarely gave speeches, kept them short, and generally demanded them not to be recorded.
- In 2016, Donald Trump broke Bill Clinton's US presidential nomination acceptance-speech record with a 74-minute nomination acceptance speech, longer than Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's 2012 acceptance speeches combined. This record would stand until 2024, when it was broken by a 92-minute acceptance speech by … Donald Trump.
- The original concept of a filibuster stemmed from a common procedural rule that if someone is speaking on the floor of some government council, the council cannot perform any other business until that person has finished talking and cedes the floor. So if a member of that council wishes to prevent or at least delay the business of the council, one way to do so is to take the floor and start talking. And talking. And talking. Given that the person speaking is not required to remain on topic once they've started talking, said speeches can get quite boring once they run out of relevant subject matter and start saying whatever comes to mind or quoting random books to pad their time on the floor. The all-time record for a one-man filibuster in the traditional mold was long held by the late Senator Strom Thurmond, who talked nonstop for 24 hours and 18 minutes in protest of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. That record was finally broken in 2025 by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), whose speech lasted 25 hours and 5 minutes in protest of Trump's second administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
- In 2022, the Premier of Manitoba, Heather Stefanson was asked a question by opposition leader Wab Kinew regarding a patient who had recently died while being transported to a hospital in neighbouring Ontario, due to none of the province's hospitals having the requisite facilities available. Stefanson replied by going on a long, rambling speech about her son's hockey team, which had absolutely no relevance to the question at hand, and she carried on for so long without ever addressing the question that the Speaker had to cut her off because she'd exceeded the allotted time limit for speaking. This came across as even more insensitive considering that the deceased patient had been a young mother, something that Kinew pointed out to devastating effect in his brief reply, and many regard it as the precise point where any hope Stefanson's government had of staying in power at the following year's provincial election evaporated.
