My dad always used the complete comparison, including "high tide." Even though it is straightforward folk wisdom to those of us who grew up close enough to water to have webbed feet, I've always wondered - and still do - whether there is a literary source back there somewhere (which may, in turn, have appropriated it from popular speech).

More importantly, nobody has yet mentioned another of Walt (Pogo) Kelly's contributions to American political thought (is that an oxymoron?)...The Public Clammer.