a) Brett Favre explaining it’s always better to take a sack than throw an interception;

b) Larry King speaking out against divorce;

c) Osama bin Laden joining the Peace Corps;

d) Bill Clinton lecturing on the evils of adultery;

e) Mark Foley calling for tougher laws against sexual exploitation of minors;

f) all of the above; or

g) more brazenly phony and dishonest than any of the above.

If you picked (g), congratulations, you win!

So why is Doyle - who stood as a one-man obstacle to expansion of private school choice - now trying to take credit for the very thing he tried desperately to kill? The answer speaks volumes about Doyle, his lack of accomplishments as governor and his need to portray himself as someone he is not.

Doyle could run TV ads about things he has actually done as governor. Well, he would do that if he had actually done anything. I suppose he could run ads on the three times he vetoed legislation mandating photo identification for voters or the three times he vetoed property tax freezes. He could run an ad about the state contract he steered to Adelman Travel or about the sweetheart deals he negotiated for American Indian tribes. But none of those things are politically popular but are, in fact, disgraces. Left with nothing positive to boast about, Doyle is reduced to lying about his record and taking credit for a program he has tried to kill, not expand.

It was, of course, Doyle who adamantly opposed expansion of the program that has allowed thousands of Milwaukee teenagers to escape the hellhole of the Milwaukee Public Schools system and instead attend outstanding religious schools. It was only after hard-hitting TV and radio ads attacking Doyle’s stance started airing that the governor relented. Even then, he insisted on more tax money for public schools in order to appease his benefactors in the state teachers union who loathe school choice.

But with polls showing Doyle running behind opponent Mark Green in normally Democratic Milwaukee County, Doyle is desperately trying to prop up his support with black voters. Thus, the school choice ad. It’s a good thing TV wasn’t around during the Civil War. Jefferson Davis would have taken credit for ending slavery. If anti-choice Doyle’s ad making him appear to be in favor of school choice doesn’t work, I suspect he’ll have to trot out his two adopted black sons as he did in a particularly shameless 2002 ad.

The fact that Doyle is forced to run on a record that isn’t his is an indication of how much political trouble he is in. Whenever an incumbent is forced to masquerade as somebody else, it’s a sure sign the voters don’t approve of the real thing. What next, governor? An ad proclaiming your support for cleaning up Wisconsin vote fraud? I better not give him any ideas.

* * *

Doyle’s attempt to rewrite the record of his four years in office apparently knows no limits. Another Doyle ad says "Governor Doyle’s always opposed welfare and Social Security for illegal immigrants." Good grief. Do the lies never stop with this guy? It was Doyle’s administration that created a program to issue state-guaranteed mortgages exclusively to illegal immigrants. When I wrote a column and railed on my talk show about the program, the governor and his aides not only defended it but implied it was racist to oppose it.

Doyle has not only supported government benefits for illegals but even created a program to give them mortgages and then limited its eligibility to individuals here illegally! Legal immigrants weren’t eligible! Now, the same Doyle (or the one claiming to be Doyle) is making himself out to be a hardliner on immigration.

I don’t know what’s more galling. Is it Doyle’s attempt to re-invent himself at election time or is it the condescending attitude he and his supporters show toward conservatives who support tax relief, enforcement of immigration laws and crackdowns on vote fraud? The same Doyle backers who treat right-wingers as racist yahoos openly embrace Doyle’s adoption of the causes that they mock conservatives for advocating. Wink, wink, nod, nod. "We know you don’t really mean it, Jim. You’re not like those actual conservatives. You’re just faking it to get re-elected."

There is an alternative to all of this phoniness. We can simply elect a guy who actually supports all of the things Doyle is pretending to support.