Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) confronted Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) Wednesday about his past comments calling him a snake, saying “tell it to my face.

Populism certainly is rhetorically effective and electorally useful. However, the problems come when anger itself becomes the organizing principle of politics, and distrust is no longer a starting point for reform but merely the point of the exercise.

Anger provides a way to temporarily numb or avoid pain, which is why, when you bang your thumb hanging a picture, you don't pray. It’s a survival-based function of anger—if you’re being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger, you can’t say, “My knee ...