Alas, A Hackett/Brown Post

It's supposed to be a favorite of political junkies, but I'm finding the Hackett/Brown tilt increasingly dispiriting. Here's the latest.

Time Magazine's Joe Klein is making a late bid to elbow out David Sirota as the Hackettphile's Least Favorite National Commentator with a column on the race this week. Bottom line: he likes Sherrod and finds Hackett's grasp of the issues thin.

More than Hackett's grasp of the issues, the Klein piece troubled me with it's passing reference to Hackett reprising the Bin Laden line at campaign stops. When I said he deftly spun his Bin Laden gaffe, I hoped that he realized it was a gaffe. If he is comparing Parsley to Bin Laden on the stump, nothing good will come out of it. Much of what I would say on that, High and Broad has already said, so read it there. One point to add: I can't help but wonder if Hackett will be spurred to more extreme heights of rhetorical excess by Harry Reid's recent capitulation to Republican criticism.

As to Hackett's substance, I've blogged on it before. Having reviewed once again the MTB transcript, I can see Klein's point. Hackett has obviously made a study of the health care crisis and his discussion on that topic sounded good at the time. Reading the transcript again, I'm at a loss to explain why. Hackett seems to have a ten-word-or-less answer for everything. Health Care? "Look at how Europe does it." Iraq? "Bring them home now." Education? "Equitable funding across the board." I confess that I was taken in by style over substance. It doesn't happen to me very often, but it did at MTB. (And this seems to be mea culpa day at the Akron Pages.)

On the other hand, style matters in a political campaign and Klein's piece reflects the problem with Brown's:

"Anyone who calls me a demagogue on trade knows about one-tenth as much about
trade as I do," [Brown] said as we wandered through southern Ohio. I joked that
he was more an "ambulatory anachronism" than a demagogue, which occasioned a
passionate blast against media elitists like me and a terrific argument about
trade.

Klein's headsnapping next line: "What can I say? We hit it off."

Klein's affection apparently arises while watching Brown engage in the kind of personal retail politics that has consistently kept him in Congress. Problem is, more people will hear him or read about him in the media than meet him. And reading, for example, the blockquote above, most folks will take him for an arrogant jerk.

Exhibit B in that case comes (via Plunderbund) from a recent stop in Athens. In responding to a question about Hackett, Brown couldn't resist whacking the blogger hornet nest again:

He added, though, that while he likes Hackett, he is upset at the actions of
some of the people commenting on blog Web sites about the campaign. These
bloggers, Brown said, are "basically trying to get my wife fired" from the
Cleveland newspaper.

Brown added that he has talked more about Hackett in
response to that question than he has throughout his campaign, and he intends to
focus his campaign on DeWine and the Republicans.

As someone who likes Sherrod Brown, ya just wanna grab him by the lapels and say "Geez Loueeze Sherrod, do not mention the word "blogger" again until this campaign is over. Ever."

Meanwhile, the second paragraph from that quote closely tracks the line of "party officials" who are talking to National Journal's William Beutler. In a post clarifying an earlier reference to ODP officials unhappy with Democratic bloggers (a clarification occassioned by Jill), he notes that

not a few OH Dems are less interested in agonizing over whether the eventual nominee is Rep. Sherrod Brown or Iraq vet Paul Hackett. They would rather focus on making plans for how to unseat Sen. Mike DeWine (R). We heard this concern from a Dem Party official, and from a neutral observer who happens to be a blogger as well. We also heard that the Dec. race for OH Dem chair was more acrimonious this time around. At the very least, blogs raised the volume.

At this late hour, it's hard to repond to all the ways in which this is wrong. Suffice it to say, this is not the only indication lately that the ODP would like the blogs to stay on the reservation. Um. Doubtful.

Finally, Hackett is scheduled for 90.3 at Nine tomorrow. I plan to be Meeting Subodh Chandra at that time, but hopefully some one else can liveblog it, or maybe even get some audio up. No doubt it will give Hackett Mancrush victims more to cheer about and Brown fans more to fret about.