Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0
The cliché “all politics is personal,” probably derived from Tip O’Neill’s legendary “all politics is local,” states an obvious fact, a sort of Duh! level truth. Friendship, family, debt, donations, all play key roles in binding people and PACS together. On the unfriendly downside, nothing fuels political chaos like hurt feelings and subsequent spite. Not worth saying in the age of Trump? Perhaps. But I was recently inspired to meditate further on this by Senator Rand Paul and, on a deeper dive, Hilary Mantel. I’d like to resurrect a phrase from a Wall Street Journal editorial (2016) and propose it for defining an entire era: the politics of pique.
Pique is the root of many, if not most, political decisions so it’s helpful to keep in mind while cutting through political fog and the pundit-parsing of supposed brainy strategies well beyond a specific pol’s interest or ability. And underlining the sheer pettiness of motive that kills countless innocents and costs billions is always in order.
The era was presaged by Clarence Thomas when he was accused of harassment and sexually inappropriate vulgarities during the Judiciary Committee hearings in the fall of 1991. In my view (offered, in the new tradition, without evidence), umbrage taken from those hearings greatly formed the bitter conservatism that has governed his decisions from the bench. Calling the hearings a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks,” he not only revealed a clever joy in leveraging that hurt, but profaned in the process thousands of victims who actually were lynched.
Citizen Trump advanced the vibe. Horribly embarrassed by President Obama’s roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011, Pique Political Theory suggests that Trump’s decision to run for high office began that evening, along with his administrations’ predominant policy, spite. To be fair, Obama himself had taken umbrage at Trump’s spurious claims about the President’s birthplace. Pique as policy, all around.
Senator Paul, in the summer of 2026, provided the immediately relevant example of continuing pique that began back in July, 2021. Dr. Fauci appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Senator Patty Murray. At one point in a heated, detailed back- and-forth, Dr. Fauci interjected, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about.” PPT suggests this was the beginning of Paul’s ongoing fatuous fit.
Which brings me to Ms. Mantel. In Bring Up the Bodies, young Thomas Cromwell watches courtiers Norris, Weston and others, mock Cromwell’s patron, Cardinal Wolsey. Six years later, wielding vast power in the name of his new patron, Henry VIII, he assures their downfall. (Read: execution.) Hilary understood and defined the politics of pique. And possibly, for our country, its arc under Donald I.
