to several real-life persons. The piano-playing satirist who annoys Bart is a reference to Mark Russell and Tom Lehrer. Bob Arnold, the corrupt congressman, tells Lisa that there are quite a few women senators, but Lisa asserts that there are only two. (At the time, there were indeed only two, Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland.) Then-President George H. W. Bush is featured briefly in the episode. Shortly after it aired, Bush disparaged The Simpsons in a speech during his re-election campaign on January 27, 1992. At that point, family values were the cornerstone of Bush's campaign platform, so he gave the following speech at the National Religious Broadcasters' convention in Washington: "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family, to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons." As a result, Bush appeared in future episodes in a more negative light. Themes and analysis "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" has been labeled as a satire on American politics. Michael Bitzer, in an edited book by Joseph Foy and Stanley Schultz entitled Homer Simpson Goes to Washington, said this episode "espouses the virtues, vices, and varieties of American political culture, public opinion, and ultimately the American Dream". Bitzer also wrote that The Simpsons, through "skillful" use of satire, demonstrates with this episode "insights into the underlying political culture and public opinion of the United States' governing system (and, more broadly, society at large)". In his book Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization, Paul Arthur Cantor said he was amazed by how far the episode was "willing to take its corrosive satire of national politics". He said it "attacks the federal government at its foundation, the patriotic myths upon which its legitimacy lies. It makes fun of the very process by which patriotism is inculcated in the nation's youth, the hokey contests that lead children to outdo each other in progovernment effusions." When the corrupt congressman is arrested, Lisa proclaims "The system works!" Benedict Anderson wrote in the book The Spectre of Comparisons that series creator Matt Groening "assumes that his tickled audience is confident that the system barely works [...] So why does he need to show a patriot at all, especially one who is a deluded little female block-head? Probably because he, too, wishes to be seen as giving America