Politics and the boating language

Sailing may not be everyone’s preferred recreation, but that doesn’t stop the sport from being leveraged to make a point. At least these examples don’t involve affluence or race:

• United States White House press secretary Jen Psaki, while accusing Senate Republicans for blocking Democratic efforts to raise the debt ceiling before the October 18 deadline, said how “Republicans spent like drunken sailors for the last four years before President Biden took office.”

• New Zealand politician David Seymour, Leader of ACT New Zealand since 2014, got nautical in a speech addressing the needs to corral consensus to eradicate COVID: “Now our strategy has reached a lay line. Today’s lockdown is no longer short, nor sharp, and yet the case numbers are still rising. If we don’t change course, we will miss the mark. In this case missing the mark is a lot more serious than losing the America’s Cup.”