Dangerous incompetence, Part II
Republicans got a much-needed laugh last week when Senator Debbie Stabenow-- a Michigan Democrat whose seat the GOP is determined to nab this year -- launched an attack on the White House from the Senate floor. The snickers came when Stabenow's recounting of President Bush's failings was overshadowed by an unfortunate visual: She was wearing a red suit that matched a sign to her left reading DANGEROUSLY INCOMPETENT, suggesting that she, rather than the president, might have deserved the label.
A GOP aide quipped that Stabenow should wear that sign like a sandwich board. And Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, strolled into the Senate press gallery with a sign of his own held over his head: COMPETENCE.
Republicans don't seem to have much else to laugh about this election year.
The Democrats' sudden discipline at staying on message is beginning to score points in pubic opinion polls. The Pew Research Center's Andrew Kohut has reported that ''incompetent" has replaced ''honest" as the most frequent descriptor applied to Bush.
While the Democrats have used ''incompetence" with increasing regularity since the administration's flat-footed response to Hurricane Katrina, the phrase ''dangerous incompetence" is a recent invention of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his staff.
The one-time amateur boxer was eager to give the incompetence label ''an edge," said a Reid aide, Jim Manley, and ''dangerous" was the winning adverb, adding a flourish to the Democrats' new line of attack.
A couple of weeks ago, Reid strategists began inserting the words into talking points for press secretaries to the Senate's 44 Democrats. And during Reid's weekly Saturday afternoon huddle with Democratic senators scheduled to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows, he encouraged them to use the label to describe the White House.
''It's on the cutting edge of what's going on," Manley insisted.
A Kennedy campaigns in Boston
A Kennedy, candidate for US Senate, is planning a fund-raiser in Boston.
No, not that Kennedy. This is US Representative Mark Kennedy, Republican of Minnesota, who is on a mission to dilute the Kennedy name in the upper chamber.
The Minnesota Kennedy is drawing money and attention from Republicans nationally, including in Massachusetts, because his race is considered the GOP's best shot to pick up a US Senate seat. Kennedy is running to replace Mark Dayton, a Democrat who is retiring.
''We have almost nothing in common," Kennedy says of his relationship to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, ''except that my grandmother was Rose Kennedy." Another Rose Kennedy, that is.
But the Minnesotan does share floor space on the US House, and a cordial relationship, with Rhode Island Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Senator Kennedy's son. ''Patrick and I are both third children of the youngest of four sons of Rose Kennedy," he says.
On a family visit to the US Capitol, when his son was mistakenly handed a tag identifying him as Patrick Kennedy's son, the house's other Kennedy said his boy should have kept it: ''Patrick's in better shape to pay for your college."
For Kerry, Imus gets his Irish up
During the 2004 presidential campaign, MSNBC radio and TV personality Don Imus was a vocal supporter of John F. Kerry, sharing stories of the Massachusetts senator's visits to the Imus ranch. But after Kerry's loss, some of the bloom has come off that political rose.
On St. Patrick's Day, Imus -- broadcasting from Boston -- invited Kerry on his show for some respectful discourse on issues of the day.
But minutes after the senator left the air, the irascible Imus ridiculed Kerry. ''If I was his adviser," Imus proclaimed, ''I'd tell him he's just got to loosen up. . . . Man, talk English!"
Bid to reverse a Romney role model
As he tests the presidential waters, Governor Mitt Romney is eagerly courting the conservative wing of the Republican Party. So it was curious that in a C-SPAN interview airing tonight, he dwelled on Dwight D. Eisenhower -- a moderate-- as one of his favorite presidents.
''I looked at what he did in the White House and the character and integrity he brought to the White House and said, that's a man I respect," Romney told C-SPAN's Brian Lamb. ''I grew up when he was president. He's my first memory of president, 1952 election. I remember that, you know, 'I like Ike' slogan."
And, Romney continued, Eisenhower ''was a person you did like and you respected as an individual. Now he did some important things as well. The whole idea of building an interstate highway system and investing in infrastructure turned out to be enormously powerful. . . . Staring down the Russians. . . . But it's his contribution as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a person of integrity that I most respect."
Romney strategists eyeing a Republican presidential primary fight might coach the governor to use every opportunity he can find to wax eloquent over a different Republican president: Ronald Reagan. To the conservatives who dominate GOP primaries, Eisenhower is considered, in hard-right parlance, a ''squish."
Rick Klein of the Globe staff contributed to this week's Briefing. 
