KyKurmudgeon

Sunday's column:

FRANKFORT — When he’s scripted, as he is in ads and was at the Fancy Farm Picnic, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford has a focused, effective message.

But when he’s winging it, as he was when I heard him address the Franklin County Democratic Executive Committee recently, the focus blurs a bit and the message loses some effectiveness.

Part of the problem is that Lunsford doesn’t always recognized a good exit line when he delivers one.

Multiple times during his comments to the Franklin County Democrats, he voiced the kind of sentiment that, if followed by “Thank you and good night,” could have left the crowd in the frame of mind a candidate hopes to arouse.

“If you aren’t upset with Mitch McConnell and George Bush and the Republicans, you haven’t been paying attention the last couple of years,” he said about 12 minutes into his talk.

Good exit line, and a 12-minute speech would earn him points for brevity. But he didn’t exit. He rambled on for several more minutes, detracting from his message in the process.

When he’s winging it, Lunsford also can go overboard trying to establish his “folksy” street creds with anecdotes about his childhood on a farm and his father’s work as a “pinhooker.”

In the first place, you have to be a certified old fogy like me to have even the most remote idea what a pinhooker is without typing it into Google.

Second, no matter how humble his beginnings, “folksy” is a hard act for a Thoroughbred-owning, move producing businessman who has blown upwards of $15 million of his considerable personal wealth on three, as yet unsuccessful, runs at public office.

Besides, as Senate Minority Leader McConnell noted when the two debated before the Kentucky Farm Bureau Thursday, Lunsford’s farm upbringing is irrelevant.

In some campaigns, touting such roots as a means of connecting with the public has value. But this isn’t one of those campaigns.

This race is less a “likability contest” than it is a “dislikability contest.” If Lunsford lets this election become a referendum on him, his baggage will cause him to lose big time.

To have any chance at all against an incumbent master of political campaigning, Lunsford has to make this a referendum on McConnell being joined at the hip with the most unpopular president in recent history.

He has to make it a referendum on how McConnell has helped enable that president in fighting the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place while the real enemy regrouped elsewhere. He has to make it a referendum on McConnell’s support for the current administration’s disastrous economic policies.

Folksy won’t get the job done. Focus might. Lunsford could learn from his opponent in that regard. McConnell constantly keeps his eye on the prize, and he constantly sticks to the message he thinks can win that prize.

If Lunsford hopes to have any chance in November, he needs to hone a message that can resonate with fed-up voters. There’s plenty for him to work with, from the war in Iraq to soaring gas and food prices to the tanked housing market and the national credit crisis.

It should be a message that links McConnell inextricably with the failures of the Bush administration. It should also be an easily understood message that doesn’t take long to deliver and closes with a good exit line.

Once he’s refined that message, he should stay on it day after day. That’s his best hope of making this a real race.

It’s all about focus. There will be time enough for folksy later — whatever the outcome.