A video circulating this week shows state Sen. Geoff Gratwick, a doctor from Bangor, saying Mike Michaud is “not a brain guy.”
The video is heavily edited — we don’t know what was said by the man doing the videoing that prompted Gratwick’s comments — and pushed by the Maine Republican Party, which has a stake in denigrating Michaud. It was also recorded without Gratwick’s knowledge.
“I am 200 percent in support of Mike Michaud for governor,” Gratwick, a Democrat, said Tuesday. “His election is crucial for the people of Maine. My remarks were taken out of context, and I apologize profoundly to everyone working for change in Maine for my remarks that have led to a misunderstanding.”
Still, it brings to mind two famous quotes. The first, from Nebraska Republican Sen. Roman Hruska, was about President Richard Nixon’s nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to serve on the Supreme Court. Carwell was criticized for his record against civil rights and for being “mediocre.”
This prompted Hruska to say: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?”
He went on to say all justices can’t be like Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, fabled justices who have law schools named after them.
In this case, not all politicians can be Gratwicks or Eliot Cutlers, the Bangor senator’s prefered candidate, according to the video.
It is worth noting that the Cutler campaign couldn’t restrain itself from trying to gain political points from the video.
“The Cutler campaign does not condone the use of secret recordings,” campaign spokeswoman Crystal Canney said in a statement. But, she couldn’t stop there. “But this just confirms what we hear every day from Democratic and Republican legislators, former legislators and party activists who privately tell us Eliot is the best candidate and that they plan to vote for him. This whole flap, just like yesterday’s finger-pointing about ads, reminds voters why the parties are more interested in scoring political points than doing what’s best for Maine.”
Political parties and independent campaigns, that is.
And, the second quote, from pundit Michael Kinsley: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say,” he wrote in the Guardian in 1992.