People make fun of political correctness, but if you're running for office, left-handed lesbians of Czech descent are out there, and they are touchy. This is the kind of thing that drives politicians to stick to apple pie and motherhood. And it's not just what you say. In a memorable example of record bending, Bush accused McCain of callousness about breast cancer because he once voted against an obnoxious pork barrel bill that contained a dribble of money for cancer research. That is why politicians will go to incredible lengths to avoid voting on anything that is guaranteed to piss off a whole lot of people one way or the other.
Political discourse is full of anodyne pap.
We might call this the Chauncey Gardiner factor, after the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie Being There . Gardiner was a perfectly opaque, mindless man who came across well on television by mouthing nothing but vapid clichs. Consequently, people read into him, or projected onto him, whatever they themselves thought was important or wanted to believe. He also barely got elected and was not a popular president. Nevertheless, he was a delight compared to other politicians, and most remember him fondly as a straight shooter.