Rob Portman heading for the Twilight Zone?

What...What in the world did  Ohio Sen. Rob Portman have in mind when he joined 37 other Republican senators,  a majority of whom were from southern states, in opposing U.S. support for a United Nations Disabilities Treaty?  I mean, even John McCain and a wheel-chair bound ex-Sen. Bob Dole (pitifully rolled  onto the Senate floor for moral support) favored  the measure.

Maybe I read too many articles about Portman being  a calm and deliberative nice guy from Cincinnati who  was Mitt Romney's cupbearer throughout the campaign as a  GOP "rising star".  Maybe I almost believed that  George W. Bush's budget director and trade representative could lend a glimmer of sanity to the Republican side. Or maybe he simply caved under the maniacal pressure from Tea Partyers and homeschoolers who foolishly supposed  the measure would be a blow to U.S. sovereignty as well as curtail  the rights of parents with disabled children.

After all, in June, the  hometown conservative Cincinnati Enquirer, long a Portman booster, had an online story with a provocative  headline asking:  The Loyal Soldier: Is Rob Portman the next vice president?  Not yet, as the November election results told us.

Yet, in the disabilities vote, Portman turned up on the southern conservative roster in a 61-38 tally that failed because a two-thirds vote was required for passage.  We were told that the biggest concern of the 38 aginners was what it might do to homeschooling.  Sixty-one other senators, including all of the Democrats,  considered that hogwash, which, of course, it was.

Oh, my. The drum roll continues anyway in the media.    Now the  Dayton Daily News is  suggesting that  a Kasich-Portman presidential ticket could arise in 2016.  After all, the Columbus Dispatch has reported that the governor's name has "surfaced as a potential" presidential candidate.  Don't clip. Don't save.

Still, that would be perfect match.  Kasich has been known to say silly things.  And Portman has downgraded his own public image with his  crazy swing to the far right in opposing the disabilities measure. It could be harder for this GOP "comeback" team to receive  serious consideration  unless by 2016, the party has decided to move its show to the Twilight Zone.

Kasich sends a big bouquet to public workers!

BRAVISSIMO TO Gov. Kasich for his courageous stand against the hordes of fools who have been trying to rid Ohio of collective bargaining for public unions. He forthrightly used the occasion of Public Service Appreciation Week and Teacher Appreciation Week to remind everyone that public workers are invaluable citizens who ought to be accorded full respect and honor in their labors to make as us all happier residents of the Buckeye state.

Who else would have risked the scorn of supportive business and corporate donors by declaring his deepest gratitude for public workers with praise for "tens of thousands [actually, 350,000, if you count all public workers, guv] of outstanding teachers for whom it's more than a job - it's a calling. I'm grateful for the work they do, and I encourage every Ohioan to take time this week to thank an educator for their commitment to Ohio's future."

Effusively impressed by the work of these dedicated folks, the governor noted that they are "community leaders and our neighbors...who protect us, care for our most vulnerable, teach our children, and maintain our infrastructure to aid commerce and economic development throughout Ohio." Demonstrating his innate sense of political balance in the reports that I read, he never resorted to linking public employes to dreaded unions.

The man continues to grow politically and intellectually. If you want to do your part, take a public worker to lunch this week. And send an envelope with a contribution to the Republican Party. Be sure to mention Kasich's name, the biggest public employe of them all.

Buz Lukens: when the cheering stopped

THE NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Magazine (Dec. 26) carried its annual Lives They Lived sketches of noteworthy persons who died in 2010. The brief bios carried many familiar names that included an ubiquitous congressman from southwest Ohio whose career will be best remembered by his moral recklessness that finally sent him off to federal prison for 30 months in the mid-1990s for bribery. But that was just the tip of the iceberg for Donald "Buz" Lukens, the Hollywood-handsome, right-wing Republican who freaked out young women in his Middletown district with his youthful crew-cut looks and engaging wit. He had, after all, been convicted earlier of a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl and there were reports that he tried to fondle a young woman elevator operator in Congress. With Lukens, where there was smoke one could usually find fire.

As a political writer at the time, I was always on alert for the next Lukens scandal. There were so many instances of his misbehavior, even for a pol of his stripe. He had generated a Life magazine story linking Gov. James Rhodes to the mob, but when I reported it in the Akron Beacon Journal he hustled Ohio newsmen together on the the Capitol steps to denounce me as a liar. However, a source had confided that Lukens had read the galley proofs before the article was published - which he finally admitted to me. Such sharing of texts was not common for a major magazine. There had to be more to the story.

On another occasion I spent some time in the Middletown area tracking down reports that he was flagging money from his campaign fund to a majorette. He later described it as "scholarship" money. But even a dentist who served as treasurer of the fund (in name only) was mystified by Lukens' relationship to the young woman.

For all of the talk, Lukens was irrepressible. Until he was caught, he had held all of the right cards because he had carefully chosen them to suit his purposes. Even his arrival in a small airport conference room for a press session carried Lukens' orchestrated patriotic fervor. When his aides struggled to place an American flag behind the lectern because the mast wedged against the ceiling, I asked one of them why it was necessary to delay the meeting with such stagecraft. The congressman, he told me , always brings his own flag and wants it to appear in photo-ops.

As writer Francis Wilkinson so keenly noted in the bio:

"Lukens' ideological allies abound. The former Lukens legislative assistant John Kasich is governor-elect of Ohio. The state legislator who defeated Lukens and represented the district is John Boehner, the next speaker of the House. And if Lukens could mingle with the incoming House majority, he'd discover a curious phenomenon: legislators positioned to his right. Lukens' conduct took its toll in personal dignity. But it didn't deny him a powerful legacy."

Buz would probably take a bow for the powerful legacy. But I doubt that a person of his repeated vile behavior would give a damn about such things as personal dignity. It doesn't

come with the territory.