It takes a career pol to know one

Meanwhile, back at the  farm now that we all know it's Paul Ryan:

We are amused by all of those Josh Mandel TV ads accusing Sen. Sherrod Brown of being a "career politician".

Career politician?  Look who's talking.   At the whiz kid age of 34, Mandel has already managed a succession  of political jobs as (1) Lyndhurst City Councilman (2) Ohio state representative and (3) currently, Ohio Treasurer.  Given his urge for higher and higher offices,  he may run out of available new rungs on his political ladder by the age of 40.  Either that, or his financiers will run out of campaign money.

It wouldn't at all be an exaggeration to note that Josh has  already made a career of his career.

What's that? Cuyahoga Falls getting Federal money?

There are some painful things in politics that are clearly unavoidable.  That's true about the federal money that is arriving in the coffers in Cuyahoga Falls, a city  whose Republican Mayor Robart recently  bestowed the highest honor on Tea Party fiscal conservatism.  In this instance (certainly not the first for such federal- to- city transactions in the Falls), the mayor reported a grant of $489,704 from the  Federal Emergency  Management Agency (FEMA) to increase the size of the firefighter staff. Right. FEDERAL money right here in River City, folks. Actually the money was originally announced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat.  We're happy for the firefighters, even if the grant didn't fit Robart's Republican brand.

Blankety-blank verse for Ohio Senate race...

Here comes the old gang led by Pat Boone
That you'll be hearing from quite soon.
With nearly a million to spend
Seeking Sen. Sherrod Brown's end
For Mandel, still another silver spoon! 

McCain vs. Mandel: A test of character

In my weaker moments, there are times when I find myself sympathetic with Sen. John McCain, the man, not John McCain the politician. In my weaker moments!

There he was, the Old Soldier, fulfillng his political obligation by soldiering in Ohio for another veteran, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel - at least that was Mandel's title the last time I looked - for the U. S. Senate. The Plain Dealer reported that McCain showed up at a VFW post in Hilliard, Oh., to laud the Republican whiz kid with words like,

"I believe that the future of America rests with our being able to elect young men and women with the knowledge and background and experience and dedication of Josh Mandel. "

That's a bit obligingly much, even for politics., don't you think? And I'm sure that McCain may have crossed his fingers when he uttered such nonsense about a young man who has been adrift in a fantasy world of well-financed and well-reported lies even before he entered the race against Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

You feel McCain's pain when you recall that as a candidate against Barack Obama in 2008, he corrected a woman at a rally who accused Obama of being an "Arab terrorist" - a synonym in her mind for Muslim. He gently leaned forward to her, shook his head, and quietly said, "No, he's a good man...A decent family man citizen." (I think he meant well in this context even though an Arab or a Muslim can very well be a good man.) One of his few memorable highlights in a campaign largely focussed on the decline and fall of his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Fast forward to 2010, as Mandel campaigned for Ohio Treasurer with the guarantee that he would serve the entire four-year term. His TV ads against Kevin Boyce, a black Democrat, strongly suggested that Boyce was a Muslim. It created such an uproar that he finally pulled the ads, but the public jury had already digested it.

Seems to me that there is quite a character gap between McCain and Mandel in how you go about trying to win elections, even if the Old Soldier went off the page complimenting Mandel's "knowledge"(!), "background"(!), "experience" (!) and "dedication"(!).

For McCain's sake, let's hope that the word gets back to him before he is further embarrassed by politically responding to his call to duty.

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There's so much speculation today about whom Mitt Romney will choose as his veep, I might as well enter a name of someone who will be out of work next year: Joe Lieberman. Like Romney, he has been all over the partisan universe. But no matter Romney's final choice, he or she should be aware that McMitt could choose a different person the following day.

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Did you see that the Tennessee senate passed a bill with only one dissenting vote, 28-1, banning students from holding hands because it is a "gateway sexual activity". And teachers who demonstrate such naughtiness instead of "tsking the dangers it poses" could be sued. Time to recall the ghost of Clarence Darrow down there.

* * * * *

Did you also see that Barberton has dismissed 28 more teachers because of cutbacks from the states and Feds. What is it about educating our kids that we prefer to do without?

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With John Boehner now in tow, I keep waiting fro Gov Kasich to endorse Mitt Romney and invite him to a social occasion to watch a campaign film on Senate Bill 5.

GOP's Bob Bennett may be back in town

ALL OF THE talk that former Ohio Republican chairman Bob Bennett will return to that high office as the new Ohio Republican chairman can only bring remorse to Summit County GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff. Over the years, Arshinkoff, having once aspired to the state job himself, never had anything good to say about Bennett. And now that Gov. Kasich, who rules the GOP plantation these days, has succeeded in brutally dispatching the party's current chairman Kevin DeWine, Alex can expect no favors from the party's downstate headquarters. Or maybe at 73, Bennett will generously disregard past insults.

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The headline in today's Columbus Dispatch has this to say about the Republican whiz kid who is running for the U.S. senate against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown:

Mandel campaign endures 'rocky start'

And then some! So far, all we've learned about Josh Mandel, the 34-year-old Ohio treasurer, is that he's challenging Romney for empty talking points but an avalanche of campaign cash. Avalanche may be too cautious. Two major conservative Sugar Daddies, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are among the majors who have plowed more than $5 million into TV ads bashing Brown . And there is doubtless a lot more on the way.

Among Mandel's weirdest charges against Brown is that the senator, a longtime friend of labor, has been in the forefront of sending American jobs to China. When challenged on that easily refuted form of political idiocy, Mandel blithely says he has no reason to stop saying it and plans to utter it "again and again''. He also boasts that he is an ex-Marine with two terms in Iraq. Thank you. We can honor that. But I can also add that as an ex-Air Force officer myself, I would have made an awful senator. Frankly, the young man gives me a headache.

* * * * *

Well, here come the birthers again. Two Republican congressmen are now expressing grave doubts that President Obama's birth certificate is authentic. So naming names, they are Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Says Hartzler, one of the people minding the Tea Party store: "I have doubts that it is really his birth certificate." Can you imagine how much more of this nonsense we'll be hearing into November by Republicans who want to lead this country into ...um...greatness?

GOP senatorial committee needs a dictionary

WE WERE HAPPY to see the Columbus Dispatch's Joe Hallett set the record straight on the Republican Senatorial Committee's attempt to smear U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown by making one word serve for another. According to Hallett, the RSC found useful a column by a "GOP-friendly conservative" blogger quoting Brown that Congress was a little more "niggardly" on spending money when the veterans came home from the war.

Well, now. Pure racist gold for Brown's Republican opponents, who have been sinking more deeply each day into the muck to portray Brown as something that he isn't. To the blogger's credit, Hallett wrote, the blogger placed the correct non-racial definition at the top of his post. To its discredit, the RSC removed the definition and mass-mailled the blog post to news outlets.

There are two ways to look at this untidy event: The RSC is either trying to advance another myth, or it is too dumb to know what the word means. We like the second choice. But we're not sure.

Whiz Kid Mandel: a growth industry for shoemakers

WELL, WE GOT OUR first look at Josh Mandel the 34-year-old Ohio treasurer and self-reputed Republican whiz kid who is now running for the U. S. Senate a little more than a year after he stepped into his current four-year job. But more importantly, he visited us with stage props in the form of some worn-out shoes that he held up at the end of his Akron Press Club speech Thursday - optics to prove that he's feverishly interested in moving to Congress.

It was tempting to wonder why anybody would care about the candidate's worn- out shoes after lunch with cookies for dessert.

Although Mandel assured his audience that he has a fresh young vision for remedying governmental ills, the shoes schtick is not really an innovative badge of political character. In 1952, Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign may be best remembered by an unposed photo that revealed a large hole in his left shoe. That was soon followed by people wearing tee-shirts commemorating the historic shoe with his remark that "Better a hole in the shoe than a hole in the head!" And eight years later, Nikita Khrushchev threw a tantrum at the United Nations and banged his shoe on a desk. ( And didn't an old woman once live in a shoe?)

Still, Mandel's moment - allegedly the official announcement of his candidacy that has been under way for months - had come to tell us that he had worn out three pairs of shoes and knocked on more than 19,000 doors (who besides him is counting?) in the Cleveland area in an earlier campaign for the state legislature. That preceded his dash for state treasurer (won during a nightmarish year for Democrats in 2010) which now is quickly morphing into his Senate space probe. He's still a tad too young to declare for president, so there is still some good news to report on the footwear front.

Listening to Mandel's shrill populism, I was carried back to a much earlier day in 1972 when as a reporter I followed young Dennis Kucinich back and forth across Cleveland in his first thrust at a congressional seat. He was forever eager, in a hurry and angry. We had never met, but agreed by phone to spend some time together for a day or two of campaigning. When I arrived at his door on the city's west side, five minutes past the appointed 7 a.m., he flew past me

to the car while scolding me that I was late. For God's sake, I said, I've never been in this neighborhood before and missed a turn. I knew it was going to be a long hard day.

There are similarities. Maybe this is the inevitable spinoff from the ways of Cleveland politics since Mandel is a Cleveland area (Beachwood) lad himself.

While I was being drawn to the connection, Mandel was declaring that he wanted to rise above the scandalous politics of Washington for the sake of future generations, and it was impossible for him to ignore his calling. "We can't wait six more years," he declared, noting that Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has been in one office or another for 37 years (which, at Mandel's own age, would be quite impossible for him to duplicate for now. But I'd say give him time. There are at least six shoe stores in the mall near my home.)

So he hauled out the customary Republican chant to lower taxes, create jobs, kill Obamacare (with a few exceptions) and throw out Brown. "The country is being driven over the cliff and Sherrod Brown is at the wheel.", he declared, with a bit wheel spinning himself. He would be the guy who would assume the role of saving America because he couldn't turn his back on all the people who urged him to run. A year ago, he said, he never thought he would be standing before this audience declaring yet another candidacy. Nor even three or four months ago when he turned down an invitation to the same lectern because he was "too busy." But it takes true leadership to understand that we live in an ever-changing world, right?

Refreshingly, he didn't pick up on some of the current garbled right-wing notions that it was God's will.

But on some major issues, he simply indicated little understanding of Brown's record. I'll give the most puzzling example: Brown's long pursuit of retaining jobs in America rather than staffing Chinese assembly lines. The senator has proposed more equitable free trade policy that has earned him broad support from organized labor. Josh didn't mention it.

Oh, he was asked whether he supported Issue 2 restricting unions, which was trounced by Ohio's voters the past November. I wasn't clear about his response. So I asked some others around the room. They weren't sure, either.

Still this young man will have staying power with deep pocketed supporters like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which have already flooded TV with anti-Brown ads. So if Mandel tells you he will be his own man independent of Democrats and Republicans and will have only "11.5 million Ohioans" as his bosses, I wouldn't take that one to the bank!

Aside to Josh: I know it was a learning moment, but please understand that when you address any press club, the doors are open to all chroniclers of your appearance, even your opponents. Don't you think it was sort of amateurish for your people to attempt blocking a video camera managed by one of the senator's guys? I wouldn't be surprised that you'll get a chance to see clips from your speech in a TV ad or two.