Meaning
An issue so politically dangerous that any politician who touches it risks career death, after the high-voltage rail that powers subway trains and kills on contact; Social Security was the classic American example, and the label now sticks to any untouchable topic. Confined mainly to political journalism, usually in the pattern 'the third rail of' a given politics; often paired with 'touch it and you die'. Regional use: Chiefly American English, spreading to other varieties.
Origin
The image is literal: the third rail is the conductor rail beside railway track that supplies power to electric trains, and touching it delivers a fatal shock. As a political metaphor it dates from the early 1980s and the fight over Social Security financing in Washington. It is usually credited to House Speaker Tip O'Neill, but the evidence points elsewhere: Wikipedia records it as a 1982 coinage of Kirk O'Donnell, an O'Neill aide, with Social Security the original referent, while the History News Network account, based on Derthick and Teles (2003), credits O'Neill himself in the early 1980s, after the May 1981 collapse of Reagan's benefit-cut plan and before the 1983 Greenspan Commission rescue. The precise coiner is unresolved; the date and setting are not.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- political third rail
- the third rail of politics
- touching the third rail
Usage Examples
- Pension reform has become the third rail of coalition politics; no leader has survived an attempt to means-test it.
- Candidates flirt with overhauling Social Security, then remember it is the third rail and abruptly change the subject.
- In this parliament, rural school closures turned out to be the third rail that no minister wanted to touch.