Uncommon Commentary #483: Days of Whining and Neuroses

(I had some difficulty coming up with a title for this u.c., until I remembered the motion picture Days of Wine and Roses.)

It’s difficult to understand how, in the willfully neurotic civilization that we presently have, one can have a career in politics without developing a pathological dread of saying something that might offend a significant portion of our population, and thus have a damaging or even fatal effect on that career.  Do you remember US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott?  His life in public office was effectively destroyed by a single off-the-record comment.  Lott, of course, was a Republican, and the peril of which I write does apply much more truly to the GOP than to the Democrats, who, anyway, expect their constituents to be super-sensitive, intolerant paranoiacs.