Say this for Scott Brown: the junior senator from Massachusetts knows how to look good. He’s had a lot of practice at it, and it shows.
When a local minister and church member were kidnapped while on a trip to Egypt, Brown knew just what to do. He called the minister’s family, gave them his cell phone number, talked to them regularly…and made sure the local media knew it was happening. The result was a daily stream of favorable stories in the local media about Sen. Brown.
However, to the (probably minor) extent that any member of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation played a role in the safe release of Rev. Michael Louis, Lissa Alphonse and their Egyptian tour guide, it was the Bay State’s senior senator, Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, who spoke twice to the US ambassador to Egypt and had his staff work on the issue over the weekend. Kerry, though, made the “mistake” of waiting until the hostages were released to speak to the families.
It’s not Brown’s fault that Kerry is notoriously bad at the retail politics of constituent services.
It’s just too bad that Brown’s best talent—by a long margin—as a public official seems to be a talent for advancing the career of Scott Brown.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
