PD offers special splash on Johnny Governor.

With Johnny Football's  arrival as the biggest gorilla in the media room, the Plain Dealer seems to have decided to double the pleasure with a six-page special section on Sunday about Johnny Governor.

John Kasich, of course.  The paper tells us, avalanche-like, that the Guv "is on a mission to reshape conservatism". But then teasingly  asks, "Will it get him where he wants to go?"

If you, like me, are thinking White House, with his November re-election campaign nothing  more than an overnight stay at  Holiday Inn somewhere on the trail, you could take  that to the bank.  Along the way, you find a guy who is mercurial, an elusive target, cliche-ridden, snappish but, as he would have it,  a compassionate conservative. Remember?

For those of us who spent much of Sunday ridding our swampy  yard of stricken  bushes,  and branches and dead bamboo, we could only scan the section while wondering whether there must be more to the story in publishing it now rather  than in the fall. As for Kasich, he must have loved it, particularly that big photo of Frank Jackson,
Cleveland's Aftrican-American  mayor, hugging him.  Hmmmm...

I will await evidence proving me wrong, but the PD, like other major papers in the state, is prepared to endorse him over Democrat Ed FitzGerald.

At this point, however, the Kasich Klatch is a reminder of Democratic Gov. John Gilligan's re-election campaign defeat by  Jim Rhodes in 1974. . Gilligan's top advisors were so sure of his re-election that his chief of staff even showed me a road map on how his boss would sweep the Democratic convention for the presidential nomination.

History will show that Rhodes shattered the playbook by upsetting Gilligan.