“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff” Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (New York: Scribner, 2007), chapter 1, “Had Enough?”
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In context
Evoking the world of Lee Iacocca — American automobile executive — Ford Mustang, Ford Pinto, and the Chrysler rescue. Theme: "We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The source
Book
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
Authors
Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
Chapter
Chapter 1, “Had Enough?” — the fourth sentence of the book
Publication
Scribner, 2007 (ISBN 1416532471)
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”
2007
The book’s opening paragraph, as reproduced by permission ↗. One sentence has been elided for length — “We should be screaming bloody murder” sits between the second and third sentences above. What follows the paragraph is the line the book was sold on: “Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!”
Wikiquote’s Lee Iacocca page ↗ lists the fuller passage — through “This is America, not the damned Titanic” — and sources it to Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (2007), Scribner, ISBN 1416532471. Two independent routes, one book.
Wikipedia’s article on the book ↗ confirms the 2007 publication and the co-author credit to Catherine Whitney, and summarises the leadership framework the rest of the book hangs on.
The internal evidence fits. The chapter has Iacocca writing “Lee, you’re eighty-two years old” in his friends’ mouths; he was born on 15 October 1924 ↗, which makes him 82 through most of 2007.
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Context
Why it mattered
This is the sound of an eighty-two-year-old industrialist deciding he has nothing left to lose. The sentence arrives fourth, before any argument has been made — the chapter ↗ opens “Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage?” and then swings. Iacocca had spent a long career being quoted as the voice of American business. He used the last of that credit on a tirade.
The targets are all 2007, and he names them in the same chapter: a president he accuses of ignoring the Constitution and leading the country to war “on a pack of lies,” tax cuts for the wealthy (“thanks, but I don’t need it”), business leaders famous for being “the guys in handcuffs,” a press “waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions,” and the failure to clean up after Hurricane Katrina.
You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged.
Read the full story
The line most people remember from the passage is the one right after it: “This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!” Iacocca knew exactly what he was doing — he says so, in the chapter, in those words: I’ll give you a sound bite.
He was making the same argument about his own industry that spring. In a Morning Edition interview on 26 April 2007 ↗ he told Steve Inskeep that Detroit had been slow to notice the market had moved, and called for “something like the Manhattan Project” to get America off fossil fuels. The book’s complaint about not being able to “build a hybrid car” is the same thought, in his angrier register.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1924–2019 · American automobile executive — Ford Mustang, Ford Pinto, and the Chrysler rescue
Lido Anthony “Lee” Iacocca was the most famous car executive of his generation: the man behind the Ford Mustang, the driving force behind the Ford Pinto, president of Ford from December 1970 until Henry Ford II fired him in July 1978, and then for fourteen years the chairman who pulled Chrysler back from collapse. He was also a bestseller twice over. Iacocca: An Autobiography made him a household name in 1984; this book, at 82, was the angry one.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (New York: Scribner, 2007), chap. 1, “Had Enough?”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff’?” Last verified 26 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/weve-got-a-gang-of-clueless-bozos-steering-our-ship-of/