George,

There is no reason, ever, for a press secretary to alienate any member of the electorate. Robert Gibbs should be replaced as White House press secretary with someone of greater political acumen.

Crazies of the professional left and the professional right, or amateur crazies, do not call themselves that, and do not think they are. They look unkindly at critics.

Think back to the aftermath of the 1972 election when the GOP scored the largest margin of victory in history as the voters choose Richard Nixon over George McGovern.

Virtually everyone realized that the South Dakota senator's record as a liberal made him unelectable as a national candidate. But not quite everyone. After the election The New Republic paid good money to buy a cover article saying the reason McGovern lost 49 of 50 states was because he wasn't liberal enough.

No matter how iconoclastic his views, one is never, never called crazy in public by a White House press secretary.

Rey Barry (Electronic mail, August 12, 2010)