Sherrod Brown is in the spotlight

Any United States senator who gets his hair cut by a barber named Carlo (rather than a hifalutin hairstylist called Maurice) is ideally suited to run for president as a champion of the common people.

And speaking of being suited, it certainly helps the senator’s everyman image to be described thusly: “ ... even in a well-pressed suit he somehow radiates rumpledness.”

Those are the words of veteran columnist George F. Will, the conscience of the traditional Republican Party, in a recent column about Democrat Sherrod Brown’s prospective bid for president in 2020.

Brown, Ohio’s senior U.S. senator, wears his 35-year tenure in elected office as a badge of courage. He shrugs off criticism that he’s nothing more than a career politician with this simple retort: Being a public servant is an honorable calling.

The leading Democratic politician in Ohio – and fast becoming the national voice of the progressive wing of the party – was elected last month to a third six-year term in the Senate.

The victory turned the national political spotlight on Brown because Republicans retained control of every other statewide non-judicial office in Ohio.

Before delving into the senator’s possible bid for president, let’s go back to his hair-do.

Recently, Andrew J. Tobias of Cleveland.com (The Plain Dealer) published a story with the headline “Meet the man who tries to tame Sherrod Brown’s unruly hair.”

The article featured a large picture of Carlo Sarti, an affable looking man dressed in a white long-sleeve shirt and black trousers held up by suspenders. Ironically, Sarti is bald.

Here’s how Tobias led off:

“Carlo Sarti, 73, learned two main rules in barber college.

“No religion. And no politics.

“But he says his customers have no problem when Sen. Sherrod Brown comes in for a trim.

“‘Most of ’em, they all like him,’ Sarti said in an interview from this longtime business, Carlo’s Barber Shop in Garfield Heights. ‘He’s a good person. He’s a good person. Most of all, my customers they can’t believe when they see him over here. They’re shocked. They say, Oh my God, a senator, Sherrod Brown here. They kind of can’t believe it.‘

“Sarti doesn’t follow politics especially closely, but he knows Brown is considering a run for president. Even though he doesn’t use computers, he also is aware that Brown’s mussed, curly hair is sort of a thing. Earlier this month, when Brown showed up on CNN with his hair looking unusually clean-cut, national reporters noticed.”

Being coiffed isn’t Brown’s look. He is the antithesis of the Washington politician: pinstripe suit, crisp white shirt, power tie, every hair in place, mentally vacuous.

Sherrod Brown certainly can’t be accused of being shallow. His intensity when discussing the issues he believes are most important to middle- and low-income Americans is infectious.

It’s why a serious journalist like George Will would suggest in his column (published in The Vindicator Dec. 13) that the Ohio senator’s “muscular progressivism” should alarm conservatives wary of interventionist government.

Will established Brown’s bona fides to serve as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee with this review of the November general election:

“Last month Brown, 66, became just the fifth Ohio senator since the popular election of senators began in 1914 to achieve a third term, winning by 6 percentage points in a state Donald Trump carried by 8 points, a state no Republican has lost while winning the presidency. Brown did 20 points better than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 results in Appalachian Ohio and the industrial Mahoning Valley, and 15 points better in Lucas County, an autoworkers’ stronghold. If Democrats are looking for a lefty who can win in 2020, they should look at Brown as seriously as he is looking at running.”

Regular readers of Will’s column will know that the conservative commentator doesn’t suffer fools kindly. Thus, Donald Trump’s presence in the White House and his role as the leader of the Republican Party have engendered a virulent reaction from the party’s establishment.

The billionaire real estate developer from New York City ran as a Republican not because of ideology, but political strategy. He once was a Democrat who contributed financially to Democratic candidates.

Trump’s political shallowness stands in sharp contrast to Brown’s deeply held beliefs.

Here’s what Will wrote about the senator and the president:

“The fact that he is a political lifer – elected Ohio’s secretary of state in 1982 at 29, he then served seven terms in Congress – seems less like a defect than a credential now that the nation is two years into its experiment with treating the presidency as an entry-level public office. In the most important vote during Brown’s 25 years on Capitol Hill, he voted against the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq.”

Ohio’s senior senator says he’s still weighing the pros and cons of seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020. He would be running safe.

Nonetheless, with all the national attention Brown’s getting, the decision to run is being made for him.

Just ask Carlo the barber.