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The writer always asks why I make fun of elected officials in my columns. Why do I not take them as seriously and as reverently as their followers do?

I’ll let one of America’s greatest writers answer that one for me.

“The devil’s aversion to holy water is a light matter compared with a despot’s dread of a newspaper that laughs,” Mark Twain wrote.

Twain, born Samuel Clemens, was a Missouri-born poor boy who grew to be the most famous author in the world. He rubbed shoulders and pressed the flesh with some of the most powerful political figures of his time—he published President Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs—but he never surrendered his often humorous, sometimes caustic disdain for them.

He gave the Gilded Age its name when he co-wrote a novel with that title. He saw that era with clear eyes and recognized the politicians who moved through that greedy, grasping time as the figures of chicanery and cheap self-interest and self-justification that they were.

I’m no Mark Twain.

Saying that is not an exercise in self-deprecation. There was only one Mark Twain. He was and will forever remain a singular phenomenon, a genuine American original.

But like him I was born a Midwestern lad of modest means who has found himself often in the company of elected officials.

Many, perhaps even most, of them I have liked. Some of them—the late Richard Lugar and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels come to mind—I’ve admired a great deal even when I’ve disagreed with them on important or even fundamental issues.

But like Twain, I’ve never yielded my conviction that they need periodic reminders that, however prominent they may be, they are the servants of the people, not their masters.

Twain knew that humor was a great leveler—perhaps the greatest one there is.

That is why insecure leaders abhor jibes at their expense. This is the reason President Donald Trump has been so determined to chase comedians Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel from the air. Their jokes deflate his sense of himself, which itself is based more on a false notion of bravado than any true self-confidence.

More self-assured leaders—think Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan—take the sting out of humor at their expense by making it clear they are in on the joke. Reagan defanged jibes about his age by asserting once that Thomas Jefferson was a friend of his. FDR deflected swipes at his supposed imperial pretensions for taking his dog on a U.S. Navy excursion by saying he could shrug off such charges, but his dog was mightily offended by them.

I must admit, though, there’s more to it than that—in my case, anyway. (I wouldn’t dream of speaking for Twain, who could speak better for himself than anyone.)

There’s something about pomposity in a politician that creates an irresistible temptation for me.

It’s almost as if you were giving me a sewing needle and seating me next to an overinflated balloon. You can walk away hoping you won’t hear a loud bang before you take your next three steps, but your hopes will be disappointed.

I feel the same way about politicians who love to belittle or poke fun at others but can’t stand to have anyone make sport of them.

Trump’s on that list. So are Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and—God love him—Indiana Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour.

They all love to dish it out. When someone asks that they take it, too, they dissolve into whiny puddles of petulant self-pity.

Clearly, no one ever taught them that not only is there no crying in baseball, but that catching is just as much a part of the game as pitching is.

They need to remember that, just as they also need to remember that the people who pay their salaries reserve the right to comment on their performance, even if it means having a laugh or two on their account.

That’s what it means to live in a democratic republic.

Which Mark Twain understood.

That’s why he wrote, “Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”

Amen, brother.

Amen.