Q&A …

… Writing Speeches in South Carolina | RealClearBooks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In our politicians’ defense, they have to fashion everything they say or write with the knowledge that some demographic or constituency may find it offensive or objectionable somehow. This is the reality of universal suffrage – everyone can vote, and “everyone” is a vast array of innumerable interests and ideologies and dispositions. When you add in the special interest groups, it becomes almost impossible for a politician to say anything without somebody finding it disagreeable.

On top of that, we expect our politicians to speak all the time, about everything, even about things they’re not interested in. So there’s just no way they can win. They do the only possible thing they can do: They express themselves in bland language, generalities, unwieldy abstractions that nobody can object to.