The thought occurred to me that to deal with the obligatory column about District Attorney Phill Kline’s announcement that he is seeking a second term, despite his promise to the contrary, is to, first, say I-told-you-so; and second,?write that there was not much more to say about Kline I haven’t already said, and leave the rest of the column blank.

But that would be a tacky way to deal with a historic event, and besides, when KMBZ host Mike Shanin asked me on air, when I was on his show last week, when I was going to write a column about Kline’s announcement, I hemmed and hawed, but I knew then that I could not escape. To not write a column about Kline’s announcement would be a dereliction of duty, even if the whole thing is a big joke.

I say a joke, because it is.

Phill Kline knows, even in his most delusional moment, that, should he win the Republican nomination in August, he will get trounced by a 2-1 margin in November, just like he lost Johnson County 2-1 when he ran for re-election for Kansas attorney general. Polls I have seen show Kline has the highest negative ratings, 65 percent, of perhaps any elected official in Johnson County history.

In short, while Phill Kline is admired, loved and worshipped by about a third of the electorate, the other two-thirds would like Kline to go far, far away and never have to see or hear from him again.

So, you may ask, why is Kline willing to subject himself to such humiliation?

Mike Hendricks, columnist for The Kansas City Star, with whom I agree about 32.6 percent of the time (Mike is a flaming liberal, next to me), got it right before we even had a chance to publish our next weekly newspaper. Kline wants to be a martyr, said Hendricks.

That is exactly right.

If clever Kline wants to enhance his already lofty status among right-to-life groups across the nation, consider the two scenarios.

Scenario one: He chose not to run, just as promised. That makes him look a little wimpy and, certainly, no gladiator. Imagine the pro-life convention, with Kline as its keynote speaker, and with this introduction, “and Phill Kline then retired from office.”? The word “coward” comes to mind, and the crowd feels let down. Kline loses some luster.

Scenario two has an introduction like this: “And so Phill Kline, though knowing the long odds, fought the courageous fight against abortionists and baby-killers, and was defeated with the help of an organized campaign to run him out of town, because he dared to take on Planned Parenthood.” (The crowd jumps to its feet in wild applause, and Kline collects his $10,000 check for appearing, plus future contributions through his Web site for his new, national effort to help other district attorneys fight the fight against their own Planned Parenthood chapters.)

In the meantime, Kline’s controversial race will significantly hurt other Republican candidates, like Nick Jordan, running for U.S. Congress against Dennis Moore, by sucking the oxygen out of the November race. Kline will get all the publicity. He will get tons of local contributions that might have gone to other Republican candidates, and the hostility toward Kline will seep into other campaigns, because some voters tend to paint with a broad brush.

Of course, this is not an endorsement of Kline’s opponent. It is way too early for that. I suppose, however, it is not too difficult to guess where we might come down.

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