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• And, most significantly, both men used the health care issue to symbolize that corruption.

It is that last similarity -- health care -- that is so strikingly different. The health care issue in 1991, said Wofford campaign manager Begala at the time, was "strong enough to turn goat spit into gasoline." That goat spit gasoline is even stronger in 2010 -- but for precisely the opposite reason. Unlike the glittering generalities of 1991, after two decades of debate, the last year in particular as well as 1993, the American people fully understand the dire consequences of nationalized health care. The increased taxes, the uncontrollable trillions in spending, the specter of bureaucrats telling doctors what treatments their patients can and cannot have -- and unsurprisingly to everyone but the most partisan Democrat, they furiously oppose it. Brown is doubtless aware of the twists and turns in the health care debate since Wofford's 1991 upset -- and is surely fully aware of what the late radio announcer Paul Harvey might call the rest of the story.

The year after Wofford's 1991 victory, Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush -- although with only 43% of the vote in a three-way race. After he was sworn in, health care was given prime status, with Hillary Clinton running the show in a bid to nationalize health care precisely as Wofford had advocated. The entire Clinton effort, receiving then as now huge headlines across the country, crashed and burned as Americans began to realize the details of what a government controlled health care system actually meant. By November of 1994, Harris Wofford had lost his bid for a full six-year term to conservative GOP Congressman Rick Santorum. Santorum was a decided opponent of national health care.

Now, once again, health care has arisen from the political graveyard, given life by the advent of the Obama administration, a presidency that like that of the even more popular George H.W. Bush, once soared on the warm air of political popularity. Stoked by the zeal of Harry Reid's tentative 60-vote filibuster-proof Senate Democrats, riding on the same wind Wofford rode to victory in 1991, the tables have turned savagely once again, as they did on Wofford and the Clintons in 1994. Change at hand, poll after poll shows that the American people are as fiercely opposed to "Obamacare" as they once warmed to the glittering generalities when Wofford popularized the issue.

Into the breach, ironically using a Wofford-like strategy to achieve the exact opposite policy result, has stepped Scott Brown, vowing that if elected he would halt Obamacare in its tracks. As a result, two new polls show him, again Wofford-like, of having cut a 30-something point deficit to 15% (the Boston Globe) or, incredibly, actually leading by 1 point, 48%-47% according to Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm.

Harris Wofford was 100% for a government-run health care system in 1991. Wofford, Carville and Begala picked up on the issue, tied it to Washington corruption, and delivered it in the fashion of a modern crusade -- and won against all the political odds.

But time moved on. Confronted with specifics, the American people rebelled against the idea in 1994 -- and are in full-scale rebellion yet again in 2010. Among the political casualties before an electoral shot has been fired this year are longtime Senators Dodd of Connecticut and Dorgan of North Dakota. Republicans have already been swept into the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia in 2009.

And in Massachusetts, Scott Brown, win or lose in a January special election, is already sending tremors through the political landscape by becoming the only Republican other than Mitt Romney to make a serious race for the U.S. Senate seat immutably identified with Ted Kennedy and the drive to nationalize health care. By opposing the very issue Harris Wofford used to catapult himself into the U.S. Senate and launch an entirely new era in American politics.

What does the emergence of Scott Brown really mean?

It means that win-lose-or-draw, Scott Brown is already the Harris Wofford of 2010. Like Wofford he has played the role of the little-known, no-chance David going up against a political Goliath with health care as his sling-shot. But unlike Wofford, Brown's sling shot is the promise of effectively stopping government-controlled health care in its tracks, while tying it Wofford-like to corruption -- an argument made easy by the Ben Nelson "Cornhusker Kickback." In doing so Brown is using Wofford's "goat spit gasoline" -- but to light another, very different electoral sea-change in American politics.

It is perhaps worthy of note that one of the more prominent movements to surface in 2009 takes it name from an event that originated in Scott Brown's Massachusetts:

That event?

The Boston Tea Party.

The tea partiers won that one, too.

topics:
Health Care, Harris Wofford, Scott Brown