Brown-Nixon: we noticed. Next!

The opening passage of Jonathan Freedland's Guardian column today seems to be gently sending up the commentariat for its propensity for hyperbole, group-think and superciliousness:

Brown is surely the first man since Nixon to walk on a beach in jacket, shirt and black leather shoes. He, like Nixon, is seen as a brooding leader, aided by a clutch of loyal hatchet men ready to resort to all manner of dirty tricks to destroy his enemies. Note too the bitter jealousy felt for a predecessor blessed with the sunny charm he lacks: Kennedy in Nixon's case, Blair in Brown's. The prime minister feels vaguely like an outsider in London, just as Nixon did in Washington. He shares Nixon's conviction that the establishment looks down on him as provincial and uncouth.

As Freedland points out later in the column, he is the umpteenth columnist to notice some striking similarities, in terms of style and personality, between the PM and the Watergate President.

Cult mag Bad Idea probably got there first; to be followed by, inter alia, Martin Bright, Dominic Sandbrook, Christopher Hope and Matthew Parris.

Now, I have nothing but admiration for some of these people. Martin Bright was the first columnist to make the comparison. Parris is ok. But the general point needs to be made - the comparison is getting pretty tired.

Freedland notes that when you concentrate on the really substantive issues - matters of war and peace, for example - the parallels fall away; 'Instead, he is beginning to build up a decent legacy', says Freedland, most notably in saving the banks and combating the recession.

Perhaps labouring such comparisons open the door for less respectable commentators, risibly, to compare Brown to Stalin, Mugabe or Hitler.




Enough already