About.com describes these as the “dumbest” political quotes of 2009; it’s hard to disagree:

• “The system worked.”—Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, on airline security’s failure to stop the Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a passenger jet on Christmas Day, Dec. 27, 2009. (She later acknowledged that security had failed.) (Source)

• “Hunger can be a positive motivator.”—State Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-Missouri), arguing in a press release against a program that feeds poor children, suggesting they should get jobs instead, June 2009 (Source)
• “Exercise freaks…are the ones putting stress on the health care system.”—Rush Limbaugh, June 12, 2009 (Source)
• “O-L-I-G-A-R-H-Y.”—Glenn Beck, misspelling “oligarchy” on his chalk board while claiming he had deciphered a secret code that he said was proof Obama was trying to create an “Oligarhy,” Aug. 27, 2009, FOX News Channel’s “Glenn Beck Show” (Source)
• “It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: ‘Sit down and shut up,’ but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out.”—Sarah Palin, quitting her job as governor, July 3, 2009 (Source)
• “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.”—Obama, commenting on a white police officer's arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Mass., at a news conference, July 22, 2009 (Source)
• “This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture…I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”—Glenn Beck, on Obama, sparking an advertiser exodus from his FOX News show, July 28, 2009 (Source)
• “The governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail.”—a spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, explaining Sanford’s disappearance, June 22, 2009 (Sanford later admitted to carrying on extramarital affair with his Argentine mistress.) (Source)
• “You lie!”—Rep. Joe Wilson, shouting out a retort to Obama’s address before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 (Source)
• “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel.’”—Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama’s health care reform plan, Aug. 7, 2009 (Source)