Post turtle

"Post turtle" is a phrase that has been used in the political discourse of various countries based on an old joke about the leader of a group being comparable to a turtle balanced on top of a fence post. ¹

The crux of the joke is that both the Politician and the Post Turtle:

• Did not get to their position on accident.
• Did not get to their position on their own.
• Are unable to remove themselves from their current position.
• Cannot do anything useful from their position
• Should not be in their position.

On Good Morning America in 1998, Hillary Clinton said, "If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident, and I just look at the landscape around here, and I see just lots of big old turtles sitting on lots of fence posts, and I think we need to find out how those old turtles got on those fence posts."²