One of the nice things about common sense is that it really is pretty common. Most folks from New York City to Topeka possess their own healthy supply.

On the other hand, one of the bad things about common sense is that it seems to contain some mysterious property that repels politicians from getting anywhere close to it.

In Virginia, where I live, there are important legislative elections this year. For some reason, Virginia holds legislative elections in an off-year, when there is always lower voter turnout. Oh, now I get the reason.

So I’m seeing some TV ads and getting some mail from the candidates. Here’s a mailer from the Democratic Party of Virginia. It reads, “Paul Nichols wants to keep guns out of our schools and bring Northern Virginia common sense to Richmond.”

I wonder his opponent’s slogan: “I demand more school shootings, now!”?

And how different really is “Northern Virginia common sense” from, say “Richmond common sense” or common sense in Timbuktu?

Of course, the mailing also tells us that Mr. Nichols “shares our concerns, our ideals and our preference for common sense solutions.”

But you might be wondering: how will he vote on any of the actual issues that matter in our lives? No telling.

The mailer does tell us, though, that “the only way to fix a problem is to do something about it.”

But doing some “somethings” make things worse. And there’s no sense in that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.