Again, the destructive politics of distraction

This is the sort of unholy, godawful crap that keeps good, intelligent people out of electoral politics:

It started as a one-day story, a chuckle on conservative talk radio in Boston....

But already, [Elizabeth Warren's] epic fumble of a simple question threaten[s] to change the dynamic of the Senate race in Massachusetts.

Have you ever "epically fumbled"? Right. The proper answer: Who hasn't?

Granted, you may be temperamentally, intellectually, ideally and perhaps incomparably suited to serve as a city mayor, or state senator, or U.S. representative, or even president of the United States; but to serve, potentially, you must either be a masochistic fool or possess the hide of an M2 Bradley tank--because most of your campaign will be consumed not by exchanging ideas, but by battling relentless assaults on your one or more epic fumbles ... which in no conceivable way would ever affect your public service.

So you pass. I know I did. Hell, having been permanently expelled from high school (where I spent a breathtaking, five-day whirlwind of a career), after which I entered an epically comic career as my city's most inadequate juvenile delinquent, followed by a few truly grim years of severe alcohol and drug abuse, self-destroyed relationships and raging clinical depression, I long ago accepted that any professional life of mine in the electorate's hands would be, let's say, rather Hobbesian. 

I digress, I suppose. But you get my point. And geez, how I feel for Elizabeth Warren, who didn't--as perhaps I did--deserve this crap.

Comments

[Peter G]

A fascinating peek behind the Carpenter curtain. As someone who was asked to resign his position as an alter boy, a cub scout, an air cadet and just about every organization to which I was directed in the interest of acquiring something called discipline I am not unsympathetic. All that ever interested me was the self-discipline of the mind.

[W Caulfield]

Still, one looks back and wonders "what if?" In my case, what if I'd graduated High School, finished that college degree, not spent 20 years traveling with my favorite bands.

But all we can really consider is where we are now. Once again, in my case, working for a tech firm that respects my lack of discipline and wild imagination.

PM would have made a terrible politician in today's environment. In the first place, I doubt he could bring himself to speak in public at an 8th grade level.

[Bruce]

With all due respect to the all-knowing political reporters at the Washington Post "threatens to change" is not a story.

[Janicket]

And yet, despite a month of pointing in horror and demands for more information and dark speculation about unfair advancement and mocking sneers from Scott ("I've got a pickup truck!") Brown and his ilk, Ms. Warren has actually gained in the polls, rising from 9 points behind the boyish senator to dead even. A recent poll shows that fully 69 percent of the respondents respond "meh" to the "issue" despite the best efforts of the right and its media-lite enablers to keep the pot roiling.

Perhaps there is some hope for this weary world after all.