If there were 300 lines as good as that one, the book would actually count as a funny memoir rather than what it is, which is a work as clever as your average book of knock-knock jokes interrupted by the odd explanation of cloture votes or continuing resolutions. Some passages sound as if Franken began by asking, “Siri, what are some of the most boring political clichés?” and transcribed the results. “We need to create more prosperity,” he writes, “and do it in a way where everybody gets to prosper. Which means we need to invest in our infrastructure, and in research and development, and in innovative technologies, and in our workforce, and, most of all, in our kids.” No, there is no punch line to follow. This is the kind of insomnia cure that turns up in ghostwritten political books that haven’t even been read by their purported authors, but writing is Franken’s profession. This is supposed to be a real book, not a lump of campaign cellulose.

Though almost nothing Franken comes up with is funny, the memoir nevertheless contains a lot of wit. This is because it quotes a lot of Republicans. When Lindsey Graham was running for president, and was about 15th out of 17, Franken told him, “I’d vote for you.” Graham shot back, “That’s my problem.” Non-comedy writers speaking off the cuff invariably prove funnier than Franken is on the cuff. At a dinner with senators and their spouses, Stephanie Johanns, wife of former GOP senator Mike Johanns of Nebraska, recalled glad-handing on the hustings, where one is forever confronted with a parade of new people and sometimes can’t keep everyone straight. She “turned around,” says Franken, “and saw a woman whom she knew, but couldn’t place. Stephanie said, ‘I knew I knew this woman, and I panicked. Then I figured out who she was and said, “Oh — hi, Mom!”’” When Franken tells Mitch McConnell his speeches are okay when he isn’t advancing the cause of evil, the Kentuckian fires back, “I like the evil ones better.”