Thursday, October 12, 2006
Iggy and the point of no return
Although I can't disagree on much of what Mr. Wells has to say in this post about the latest Iggy boner, there is one thing that jumped out at me that I have to protest:
And the thing about a guy's sixth gaffe is that it normally does less damage than the first five.I have to respectfully disagree.
The effects of putting your foot in your mouth regularly become cumulative until, at some point, it reaches a breaking point. This was certainly the case with Stockwell Day.
At first, people start to wonder about your credibility. Eventually, they don't take you seriously at all.
The political gaffe is probably the worst mistake you can make in politics. Based on a moment of bad judgement, your entire political machinery is ground to a halt in order to deal with the political fallout.
People have paid more attention to Iggy's latest precisely because he's done it a lot recently. Because his supporters seem to be enabling this habit by constantly defending it, I don't think he'll stop doing it any time soon, which I think will lead to a point of no return. It certainly did with Day.
