My sum total of experience with Al Franken consists of three encounters:

—An interview I conducted with him at his home in Manhattan around 1999. He was gracious, not exactly gregarious, but made time for me outside of normal business hours.
—An authentic, emotional, and quite impressive (and unpolished) speech he gave at Temple Israel a few years later.
—A fundraiser last summer with him and Robert Kennedy Jr. Franken seemed more machine-like and a bit heavy on the rhetorical fervor, but the forum lent itself to that.

A year later, I seem to be one of the few moderate lefties who still wants to see Al Franken elected. Heavy hitter DFL friends of mine say stuff like “Amy Klobuchar says Norm Coleman has worked very cooperatively with her.” Others tell me that Franken is unfriendly and insular when they’ve met him. That he seems aloof and ungracious in showing appreciation to people such as waitresses and caterers. And I keep hearing that he’s “angry” from people who I know to be angry about the current state of American government.

Putting stock in people’s perceptions, even connected people, can be risky. But when DFLers are parroting Republican talking points about Franken and PC party insiders can’t get over the fact that he penned tacky jokes, you’ve got to think something is off the rails about his campaign. I mean, nobody likes Mike Hatch, or so you’d imagine from what people say, but I never heard this kind of friendly fire during his run for Guv.

Either I misread Franken and, though smart and articulate, he’s a mean, sullen SOB. Or he has been victim of one of the most effective disinformation campaigns in state political history. Or we are an electorate who still, after eight years of George Bush, would rather elect the affable slippery character over the smart guy who couldn’t sell you a broom after a dust storm.

I suspect it’s a mixture of at least two. I just don’t know which.

The Franken campaign has to start showing the world the Al Franken I saw moved to tears when he spoke about the troops in Iraq. The guy who makes gratis USO Tours all over the globe. The guy whose passion for a just society lead him to give up a lucrative media career and depart his adopted hometown. The quirky ads from his ex-teacher and the tit-for-tat nonsense with Coleman aren’t helping.

And he needs to find a way, in a year when voters are supposedly craving authenticity and consistency in candidates, to show voters how wildly all over the map Norm Coleman is. I am a moderate pragmatist who would love to see such people in office. Norm Coleman would like us to believe he is such a guy, but watching his ideological gyrations over the past couple decades, it’s clear he’s merely a pol with his finger to the wind.

As the Fair starts and the real campaign season begins, Al Franken has failed in framing his opponent and defining his own legitimacy to voters. Norm Coleman should have been one of the most vulnerable incumbents this year. Time is running out.