In Marine Corps jargon, a “duty station” is the military base or camp where a Marine is assigned to live. Reflecting our national inclination both to romanticize what is past and to criticize what is current, Marines will regularly gripe that there is no duty station better than the one they just left and none worse than the one they’re presently at.
American voters have an almost identical reaction in their feelings toward national political leaders, tending to view those leaders more positively after they have exited center stage than they did when they were in office. …
But that mellowing pattern may no longer be operative in our tribal American politics, as we learned in this week’s focus group of 12 voters in a Milwaukee suburb, conducted for Emory University by respected Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. CONT.
Mark Shields