Peter & Peter Show

In an appearance last week before the Orange County Democratic Committee in Vershire, it became clear how prospective Democratic candidates Peter Shumlin and Peter Clavelle intend to campaign against Republican Gov. Jim Douglas next year: They intend to pretend that Douglas is President Bush.

This is a familiar and distasteful strategy. It's the same one used by the same Shumlin in his failed campaign against Brian Dubie for the lieutenant governor's job in 2002. Two years previous, Dubie had been candidate for lieutenant governor in an election that featured Republican Ruth Dwyer in a nasty campaign for governor. Shumlin spent his entire campaign in 2002 painting Dubie as an ultraconservative Dwyeresque monster. Shumlin's portrait of Dubie was not only unpleasant, it was duplicitous, as Vermonters discovered. Once elected, Brian Dubie turned out to be a pleasant political personality, eager to learn, popular on both sides of the aisle, who has found a constructive role as lieutenant governor, especially in developing new relations with Canada.

In his new campaign against Gov. Jim Douglas, Shumlin is attempting to link him with Bush in the same way he earlier attempted to link Dubie with Dwyer. He told the Orange County Democrats that Douglas is "a clone of his good friend Bush and they are leading this state in the wrong direction."

It won't wash. The characterization is so far from accurate as to be silly. Vermonters recognize hogwash when they see it.

Douglas a clone of George W. Bush? The softspoken, reflective Douglas a clone of the swaggering president? The governor with an encyclopedic knowledge of programs and policies a clone of the least-informed president we have had since Ronald Reagan? The inclusive politics of Jim Douglas a clone of the slash-and-burn partisan tactics of the Bush White House?

Hello? Earth calling Peter?

It was instructive that on the same newspaper front page that carried Shumlin's attack, Jim Douglas was featured for his friendly mission to Canada (a neighbor estranged by George Bush's policies) a story that featured his complaint about Bush policies regarding Midwestern pollution.

In Vershire, Shumlin also offered a prediction about what direction the Democratic primary between the two men will take. Vermonters can expect to be treated to "Peter and Peter telling the people what's wrong with their governor," Shumlin was reporting as saying.

Great. What a dreary, negative prospect that is. We can hardly wait.