DeWine: A candidate who enjoys his non-debate privacy

MIKE DEWINE - you remember him, former U.S. senator who was trounced by Sen. Sherrod Brown?- apparently has a new theory about confronting his opponent in this year's race for Ohio attorney general: You can run, and you can hide.

That was the gist of a report in the Plain Dealer that DeWine has turned down invitations to debate Ohio AG Richard Cordray at the Cleveland City Club, the Bliss Institute and its program partner, the Akron Press Club.

The DeWine team would consider these comments unfair. After all, they maintain , he agreed to "debate" Cordray at Lakeland Community College, a rather controlled Q&A with no audience and a couple of news people who ask each a set of questions without the candidates responding to each other. Laura Kessler, the managing editor of the Lake Country News-Herald summed up the sterile event this way: "It isn't a debate of any kind. We invited all of the candidates and we ask them all the same questions. It's not a debate. They don't talk to one another unless they happen to turn and talk to each other." In other words, she says, "There's very little interaction." ("In case you are are still interested in this phantom exposure of DeWine's views, that exercise will be televised later on the college's public access channel.

His rejection of debates runs counter to the way it usually works when a challenger demands to debate the incumbent. But I'm told this is the new world of politics.

Other than his lofty promise to Ohio's voters shortly after his nomination that his first noble act as AG will be to repeal the new health care law, we haven't heard much of interest from him. Just as well, DeWine is not the liveliest ostrich in the sands. (I remember a time when I tried to interview him for a half-hour TV program and ran out of questions in the first 10 minutes as he peppered me with responses that were stoically quite brief. He wasn't the deer in the headlights but rather the one under the bus.")

And he wants to be Ohio's vibrant next attorney general. Anything good on TV tonight?

Maher vs. Coulter: Box-office ideologies

HAVE YOU been following the reports on the series of staged debates between two otherwise cordial drinking buddies: Ann Coulter and  Bill Maher?   They are pitted in forensic combat as the gingham dog and calico cat  of the nation's ideological wars.  But anyone interested in such political nonsense was asked to pay pre-recession prices of $38 to $200 per ticket for the three left-right encounters this week in the Wang Theatre in New York.  (The series was pretentiously named "The Minds That Moved the World" although at this distance I feel terribly stationary by an artificially inseminated "news" event.  What they don't think of these days!

It was only natural for some of us to immediately invoke the historical gravity  of the seven Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign debates that expressed their profound and nation-wrenching differences on slavery.   Fortunately, neither Coulter nor Maher, comedians on different pages, has announced any interest in running for the U.S.  Senate.  We can only hope they never will.

This latest venture into rhetorical survival is, of course, box-office puffery.  By now, anybody with a wisp of interest in politics already knows where Coulter and Maher come down on the issues without an expensive  front-row theatre seat.  Besides, Maher has often said that he likes Coulter and that (Heavens!) they are good friends. I'm sure the feeling is mutual and the beer was especially refreshing after  the show.

But this is only the beginning of the little side shows  by the sponsors, aptly Madison Square Garden Entertainment.   Next up is James Carville vs. Karl Rove, May 27,  with Charlie Rose as the ringmaster.    Or Arianna Huffington vs. Tucker Carlson,  April  1.   

I think we're being hustled, folks,  and will say no more unless we find out that Maher proposed to Coulter over a glass of Guinness.   But I'm jaded.  I get my kicks from pro football  and will leave the media wrestlers to their own transparent show-biz schemes.  Maybe an Australian tag-team match with Limbaugh,  O'Reilly or Matthews  pawing in  the corners?