A really first-rate piece by the Globe’s Glen Johnson just popped up on boston.com. It says a lot of what has been milling about in my head since yesterday’s “Thank God” kerfuffle, but which I haven’t yet managed to put together in a coherent form. So I’m going to let Johnson do the talking.
Here’s the gist of the piece (emphasis mine):
The kerfuffle surrounding Senator Scott Brown and Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren after their comments about his decision to once pose nude for Cosmopolitan magazine largely misses the broader point of their early interaction in the 2012 US Senate campaign.
That point is this: Brown has shown a propensity to play the victim whenever he is challenged, while his allies have taken virtually every opportunity to date to demean Warren and cast her as an elitist since even before she entered the race.
Warren, meanwhile, has a life story that is more blue-collar than Brown or the GOP have been willing to admit, and the first brushstrokes of it would surely be compelling if enunciated by almost anyone other than her….
Immediately after his [“Thank God”] comment – made during a radio interview that Brown solicited, with hosts he chose to speak with – the senator went on to outline his hardscrabble life story…. While all of those comments about the senator’s life may be true, the suggestions he makes about Warren – and the patina he puts on his own story – belie reality.
Strong words. What, exactly, is Johnson talking about here? Details on the flip.
First, as Johnson points out and as I have noted previously, Brown’s announcement that he “didn’t go to Harvard” is utterly irrelevant, since Warren didn’t either. She, in fact, got her undergrad and law degrees from state schools (University of Houston and Rutgers, respectively), while Brown attended (to quote my earlier post) “fancy-dancy” private schools, namely, Tufts and Boston College Law School.
Second, Johnson utterly eviscerates Brown’s effort to cast himself as the everyman in the race.
“It’s elitist of Professor Warren to look down at the decisions Scott Brown made to put himself through college and rise above the circumstances of his life,” campaign manager Jim Barnett said in a statement. “Scott has fought and scraped for everything he’s got.”
The biography of Warren that is emerging, though, is far more middle class than upper crust.
She was a waitress as a teenager. She married at 19 someone she had been dating since 13. She transferred from George Washington University, which she started on a debating scholarship, to the University of Houston, when her then-husband worked for NASA.
She started her career as a special-needs teacher before getting pregnant. She then attended law school at Rutgers before working her way up the academic ladder to reach what is often considered the pinnacle in her chosen professor, Harvard Law, in 1992. Her stops along the way: Rutgers, University of Michigan, University of Houston Law Center, University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania.
By contrast, the candidate Brown has endorsed for president, Mitt Romney, is the son of an automobile executive and former governor, grew up in an exclusive Detroit suburb, and has two more Harvard degrees than Warren.
If this article is a shot across the bow of the Brown campaign operation that the media is going to call out BS when they see it, that bodes well indeed for this Senate campaign.
petr says
Brown was elected last year after a fairly stealthy campaign with last minute (out of state) donations in a foreshortened general election… I don’t think that he will benefit from that sort of anonymity this time around.
michaelbate says
is putting it mildly. It seemed that every hate group in the country was sending money and goons to support Brown.
Some of this was because this was the only campaign in the country at the time.
Here is MetroWest there were numerous sign holders whom we had never seen before.
lynne says
I’d say most! It was the only game in town and a chance to take a pot shot at the late Ted Kennedy to boot. Way too temping for the country’s haters.
michaelbate says
I meant to say “in MetroWest” not “is MetroWest”