National politics is a circus, a carnival, a battlefield, a 24-7-Drudge-Cable-Politico mudfest–and yet still, somehow, serious adults find a way to run the stuff.

Think about the terribly boring suits in the Congressional leadership, on K Street or in the best White House offices. It has always been thus. Think too about the past chairmen of the Republican National Committee, modicums of organizational efficiency, backroom glad handing and strategic acumen, people like Ken Mehlman, Haley Barbour and Ed Gillespie. They dirtied their hands only rarely by playing to the daily news cycle from office. Their main function was to do the hard boring work of organization building and execution. (On the Democratic side, Tim Kaine became chairman of the Democratic National Committee with much the same role—keep the engines running, stay out of the limelight.)

So what can we make of Michael Steele? He won the RNC Chairmanship because he was not boring, and more specifically, he was not Mike Duncan, the GOP’s organization man to end all organization men, or Katon Dawson, the South Carolina backroom dealer who loved the inside game. Steele was picked precisely because he could play in what H.L. Mencken called the “Carnival of Buncombe” in 1920, that big top circus we now call cable news, talk radio and their assorted political entertainment jabber. Steele looked good. He could communicate (those ads he ran in 2006!). He could throw a punch. Steele was seen as the one candidate with the populist potential to rebuild the Republican brand.

Now the GOP is paying dearly for its decision. Steele has fulfilled his promise too well, throwing all kinds elbows and creating all kinds of controversy. (Outrage and controversy are, lest we forget, the very currency of the big top, the central device of the talk radio circuit.)