Rich white guy sings the blues

Bill Scranton can't seem to catch a break.

A member of the founding family of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the son of a popular governor, Bill was tailor-made for politics: handsome, Yale-educated, articulate and quick witted. He was a shoo-in for the governor's mansion in 1986—having served two terms as lieutenant governor under the affable Dick Thornburgh and facing off against a three-time loser, Bob Casey.

Then he bumped into another young politician who grew up in a town that bore his family name: Jim Carville (of Carville, Louisiana).

Carville, as Casey's campaign manager, produced a now-legendary ad that depicted Bill as a former pot-smoking hippie in the thrall of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In less than a week, Bill's poll numbers tanked—and Casey squeaked into office in November on a razor-thin margin of 79,000 votes.

After the defeat, Bill went into a two-decade, self-imposed political exile, first in California and later in his home town of Scranton.

Unfortunately, Bill chose to mount his comeback in the same year that celebrated Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann would elect to throw his helmet into the ring. A primary campaign—which, in most years, would have been a cakewalk for someone with Bill's credentials—has turned into nightmare alley.

After firing two campaign managers, Bill last week had to fire a third. Jim Seif—who has long imagined himself a Republican Carville—learned painfully last Wednesday that hardball trash-talking has to be carefully modulated, particularly when the tv cameras are rolling:

Seif: The—uh, uh—Bill Scranton has—and I've known him for 30 years now—as much integrity as any person I've ever known. And that means intellectual integrity as well. His decision on the primary was made after a great deal of thought, a great deal of anger that one of the candidates had been captured by Senate leadership, by the party, by others, and directed into pretending he had the victory sewn up and pretending that he was the outsider. In fact, the rich white guy in this campaign is Lynn Swann. He's the one that hangs around the, uh …

Swann staffer Ray Zaborney: That's one of the most ridiculous and insulting things that I think I've heard in politics. You're two-for-two tonight—two of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in politics.

Oops.

Inside an hour, Bill had fired his third campaign manager of the race and was looking for a fourth.

Were Bill the frontrunner in the race, his campaign might be able to rebound from Seif's gaffe. But with a decision from the Republican State Committee on whether to endorse a candidate or have an open primary (which last happened in 1978, the year Bill first ran for statewide office) due any day, I'm predicting the party's eminences grises will use the opportunity to end an already-costly primary battle.

Right now, 2010 looks to me like a much more promising year for rich white-guy candidates in Pennsylvania.

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I did some campaign speechwriting for Bill Scranton back in 1978; I also worked with Jim Seif on the staff of the Thornburgh-Scranton campaign. For what it's worth, I don't think Jim has a racist bone in his body. He's always struck me as somebody who'd love to be a "tough pol" but has too much decency bred into him to ever quite make the cut. It's a shame his two-week career as a campaign manager had to end in Trent Lott-Earl Butz fashion.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has trenchantly dissected the Seif affair:

We've come to expect such unthinking race-based smears from the Left. Now, we're witnessing the odious spectacle of a Republican operative engaging in the same sort of slander against a fellow Republican. Seif's sanctimonious comments about fighting for a colorblind society make his defiant defense of his flippant attack all the more galling. National Republicans ought to follow in Scranton's footsteps and condemn Seif's remarks as vigorously as they condemned similar attacks by Democrats on black GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.

I think Michelle and the whole center-right blogosphere is right to give Jim Seif a thorough drubbing. There's an automatic presumption by the left and the MSM that any person of color (or any member of an ethnic minority, for that matter) who supports Republican values is a traitor to his roots. What's all the more disturbing in this instance is that a well-respected Republican would help to perpetuate that odious notion.

That said, I want to reiterate that the racist tenor of the remark isn't characteristic of the man I know (or at least used to know). Regardless, it will almost certainly be the event by which Jim's 40-year political career is remembered.

UPDATE: California Conservative offers an interesting defense of Jim Seif:

For those readers who don’t know anything about Lynn Swann, he’s rich, he’s famous, he plays golf, he hangs out at the country club, evidently, where he rubs elbows with politicians and other power brokers. Oh, yeah, and he’s a Republican.

Who has not heard this (or similar) description applied generally by liberals to the image of most conservatives? It’s the perpetuation of a stereotype. Democrats would have you believe that only they represent the poor and the “people of color.” Fortunately, many know better.

We believe it was Seif’s genuine intention to merely turn the stereotype on its head. No malice or disprespect intended. Certainly not being “racist.” As campaign manager, one could argue, he was looking to score points for his candidate by pointing out the irony.

I buy his point that Seif was trying to turn a stereotype on its head. And I feel pretty confident, knowing Jim, that his intention wasn't to make a racial slur. But he could have easily accomplished the same objective—without any racial overtones—by substituting the words "well-connected" for "white."

Jim was right to suggest that Scranton—though politically more experienced than Swann—is much more the outsider. He's been out of the Pennsylvania limelight some for two decades now and doesn't have strong name recognition here in the Western end of the state, where dissatisfaction with Rendell is highest. Swann, by contrast, is well tied into both the Pittsburgh establishment and the Bush White House—and would very likely have captured the Republican State Committee's endorsement on February 11 even without Seif's help.

But once Seif injected skin color into his comments, he changed (if you'll pardon the expression) the whole complexion of the debate. And, unfortunately, he helped reinforce all the liberal cant one hears nowadays about African-American Republicans being Uncle Toms, Oreos, house slaves and the like.

In short, while Scranton may actually be the "dark horse" in this particular race, once Seif ventured down the "white Swann" path, his (and his boss's) goose was effectively cooked.

(PETA please note: No animals were in fact harmed in the making of the preceding sentence, although the English language was tortured within an inch of its life.)