WASHINGTON — Memo to novice political candidates: Know the Constitution. Don’t tell Latinos they look Asian. Pay special attention to what you say when you are in front of cameras. Which you almost always are.
Expect your chitchat to go viral. And, really, try your best to stay out of court.
This is the year of the neophyte in politics. Anti-incumbent sentiment in general and the Tea Party in particular have brought fresh faces forward, many wet behind the ears in the brutalities of a modern campaign.
The result: a rash of impolitic politics — gaffes, raw rhetoric, unsettling theories — followed by gotchas, recycled mercilessly by opponents’ campaign ads, cable TV and the blogs.
In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell got tangled in the First Amendment, appearing unaware it separates religion and government. The Second Amendment caused grief for fellow Republican Sharron Angle in Nevada, who entertained the notion of “Second Amendment remedies” — that would be a call to arms — if government isn’t brought to heel.
Frank Caprio, Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor, did not, as has been widely reported, tell President Barack Obama to shove it after the president declined to endorse him. He told Obama to “really shove it.”
Angle has backed away from calling unemployment insurance “spoilage” and the fund for BP oil-spill victims “a slush fund.” Her aside to Latino high school students that “some of you look a little more Asian to me” showed why political consultants cringe at spontaneous remarks.
Democratic Rep. Bobby Bright, a freshman from Alabama, might have regretted saying Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “may get sick and die” before he has to vote on her speakership again. California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina regretted “the whole situation” when a live mike caught her calling opponent Barbara Boxer’s hairdo “so yesterday.”
The experienced Harry Reid, Senate majority leader and Angle’s Democratic opponent, cast himself as a savior of epic proportions, remarking that “but for me, we’d be in a worldwide depression.” In South Carolina, Democrats were mortified when Alvin Greene, an unemployed military veteran charged with disseminating obscene materials to a teenage college student, won the party’s Senate primary.
