Scott Brown is Bobby Newport

WBUR political analyst Dan Payne is a sharp guy. He’s worked strategy for all sorts of important Democrats here, from Ted Kennedy to John Kerry to Barney Frank. But he got it all wrong in a post he put on BUR’s website a couple days ago. His piece was titled “Scott Brown as Forrest Gump,” and in it, Payne compares our junior Senator to the old Tom Hanks character.

In the film “Forrest Gump,” Tom Hanks plays a goofy but oddly well-positioned witness to history. Among other firsts, he teaches a young Elvis Presley to swivel his hips, meets with President Nixon who gets him a room at the Watergate hotel where Gump discovers the break-in, and inspires John Lennon to write “Imagine.”

Not long ago Sen. Scott Brown told radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan that he met with kings and queens, a fabrication that has been captured on video at least five other times. Last Tuesday, he told CNN that President Obama and other powerful Democrats call him regularly to support their legislation.

Payne then goes on to sensibly debunk all of Brown’s various claims of grandeur. It’s well reasoned stuff. But here’s the problem: if you’re picking a fictional character for Scott Brown, it ain’t Forrest Gump. No, he’s much more Bobby Newport, the happy-go-lucky city council candidate played by Paul Rudd in the NBC sitcom, Parks and Recreation. Running against Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope character, Newport is a (very rich) regular guy who spends most of his time wondering why everything in their hometown of Pawnee, Ind., can’t always be sweet and awesome. Remember those ads Brown ran for a while about how great the Celtics and Red Sox are? Straight out of the Newport playbook. Oh, and did I mention that Newport also likes to hang out with royalty? Let’s go to the tape. First, a Newport ad:

And now, compare that to a Scott Brown radio spot on just how cool the Celtics are:

So there you have it. Brown is Newport. Newport is Brown. Now excuse me while I go pet my Persian greyhound Raclette, who was given to me by my buddy, the pretender to the crown of Alsace-Lorraine.