Sense on Cents

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

This long held quote could be attached to many political nitwits over the years. Will there ever be a more classic example of political ineptitude than that delivered yesterday by Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) in support of the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Martha Coakley?

For those who missed it, Kennedy spoke yesterday at a political rally for the Massachusetts Democrat. After the rally in speaking with reporters, Kennedy continually identified the Democratic candidate as ‘Marcia’ Coakley.

Kennedy’s gaffe is galling on a number of fronts, including:

1. He repeated it a number of times.

2. He is not some distant Democrat throwing in his two cents for a sound bite. This special election is to fill the seat his father held for 46 years. Patrick Kennedy serves the citizens of neighboring Rhode Island.

3. In my opinion, Kennedy’s gaffe displays a combination of lack of intelligence, a dose of arrogance, and pure political pandering.

People do make mistakes. Honest mistakes are one thing. Mispronouncing an individual’s name in passing is understandable. Continually mispronouncing Coakley’s name begs the question as to how out of touch Patrick Kennedy truly is.

I have to believe Scott Brown hopes Kennedy is back out on the stump for ‘Marcia’ Coakley again today.

By questioning Kennedy’s intellect and arrogance, I do not profess to think that there aren’t representatives from the other side of the aisle who are not equally dense. My main point of this commentary is to highlight the fact that Washington has far too many representatives who, generally speaking, are not all that intelligent. Patrick Kennedy, a career politician, is just one of them.

LD

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 8:26 AM and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.