Last time I checked, political involves "power" and social control. Here, it is just about: if you use Open Standards, it works. If you use something else, it's wrong because you cannot be sure it works, which is a pity when you are communicating.
However, Sam is still right in pointing out that because of the widespread use of proprietary de facto standards, switching to Open Standards for most people will mean switching from something which works to something which doesn't. "Don't send people Word files, use ODT instead" would, for many people, be equivalent to saying: Don't send people files they can read, send them files they can't read instead.
I wouldn't do it in a job application.
And, most people don't have and don't want to have a clue about *why* they can't read them either. I'm all for open standards and never send people attachments in Word format (usually using PDF, RTF, HTML or plain text), but I think there must be a better way to do it than to start sending people files they can't open.