Art: Mick SmithOne looks like a tanned, slicked-back lothario, whirling across the floor on “Dancing with the Stars”; the other, a bitter, lonely wallflower at the high school prom.
But, take away those mostly physical differences and what you’ve got are Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum -- the McCristums -- in so many other ways two peas struggling for political survival in the same illuminated pod.
Bill and Charlie, Charlie and Bill. Year after year together.
At least, that's the perception.
And let’s face it, these two epitomize how perceptions get to be perceptions.
Both are career politicians with law degrees.
Nothing says “career politician” quite like Bill and Charlie’s combined 50 years of campaigning and something in the neighborhood of 30 elections between them -- primaries included. And most of the time – snug in the well-funded bosom of the Republican Party of Florida – they won.
Both will make wildly outrageous, impossible statements to win a few votes and cheer the masses.
In 2003 I heard Charlie -- he was in his education-commissioner incarnation at the time -- promise teachers in Fort Pierce that they would all be making six-figure salaries by the end of the decade. It's the end of the decade now. How is that promise working for you, teachers?
A couple of months back during a speech in Orlando, I heard Bill promise he has a plan to create 500,000 jobs. What? Where? We're still waiting for details.
Joined at the lip, the pair of them.
Both seem to adjust their ambitions upward every 2-4 years, then pull out all the stops to go for it.
Both use their offices to further their campaigns.
Soon as Bill McCollum the gubernatorial candidate saw his millionaire opponent Rick Scott sprint ahead in the polls, Bill McCollum the sitting attorney general began using his office to fire out press releases – often more than one an hour – presumably a desperate move to increase media coverage of action-man Bill. It was all within legal limits, of course.
When Charlie wandered off the reservation – bolting the Republican Party to strengthen his chances in the U.S. Senate race – he was less into firing off press releases than capitalizing on the Gulf oil spill to play hero. Wherever and whenever he walked a beach, Charlie the governor found a cameraman ready to catch him consoling some spill victim, or a plane ready to fly him over the spill, or a national news anchor who wanted his commentary. He used his incumbency to establish himself as the people’s hero, as a national hero, as a hero capable of leading in the U.S. Senate.
Both are severely ethically challenged.
Charlie collected nearly $10 million from Republicans before he left the party in April rather than face sure defeat at the hands of conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in the GOP primary. Now Charlie’s raking in money from the Dems, too, who don’t give their own candidates much of a chance in the U.S. Senate race.
Bill, on the other hand, spent a lot of time advising Floridians to tighten their belts, then loosened his own. Having blown through the millions of dollars he raised, he developed an appetite for taxpayers'. He took advantage of the campaign matching funds last week, raking in $1.26 million as a first payment of public money. He didn't have to take it. He could have reasoned, "I went through something like $6 million on negative ads and they're not working. Let's not make the people of Florida pay for another one." But he did no such thing.
Both have a Jim Greer problem.
Jim Greer was the head of the Republican Party of Florida, and he'd been milking it dry for three years. Charlie the governor brought him aboard, encouraged him, refused to fire him. Bill the attorney general, whose job is to pursue Greer-style criminal activity, couldn't seem to pull the trigger on a prosecution until the party pretty much had been cleaned out.
Greer is behind bars, the election twins are Teflon.
Again, perception is everything.
In 2010, it's turned out to be the leaf mold on the political landscape.
The perception is of election twins Bill and Charlie, who do everything the same and say everything the same. It may not be so real anymore, but the perception is what it is.
Case in point: Bill McCollum is still beating his head against a brick wall, trying to convince the world he’s a true conservative. In fact, he is as conservative as he ever was. But his election twin Charlie Crist is not. And that -- not Rick Scott's chiding -- is why Bill can't sell it.
From now on, at least for Bill, who will never be able to shake his twin, the livin' isn't easy and the cotton isn't high. The truly good ol' McCristum days are all in the past.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com, or at (850) 727-0859.