Chris Murphy for president?

“P oliticians love praise and cameras.” Curiously, this was an observation by Sen. Chris Murphy last week, in an address he sent out in a weekly email blast, with links to audio and video of him delivering it.

I had trouble getting the video link from my email last week to work, but that’s OK, because it’s hard to turn on a television news show these days, in the time of Trump opposition, without seeing the junior senator from Connecticut being interviewed.

The senior senator, Richard Blumenthal, has been legend in Connecticut newsrooms forever for his love of the camera. I think maybe he has met his match, though, with Sen. Murphy.

I like the fact that Murphy is unapologetic about this vain side of politics.

The Trump era has been especially good for Murphy in this regard, securing him more and more air time, as news organizations look for the cut to pithy and succinct opposition and outrage. Murphy is good at this. Indeed, the senator’s press office must be on speed dial for producers at MSNBC, where he seems to be a pet interviewee. It seems like every other tweet from Murphy these days — he is almost as prolific a tweeter as President Trump — is promoting a television appearance somewhere.

Murphy’s high profile in opposing Trump also has fanned some talk of a presidential bid of his own.

Speculation about this reached a fevered pitch after a report from The New York Post last month that presidential advisor Steve Bannon included Murphy on a list of four Democrats who might pose a challenge for a Trump re-election bid.

Bannon suggested the need for digging up dirt on the four.

Murphy used the news to fuel a fundraising appeal, saying he had taken it as a compliment that he had caught Bannon’s attention.

Just last week, Sen. Blumenthal misspoke at an event and introduced the junior senator from Connecticut as “President Murphy,” before joking his way out of the blunder.

Any time he is asked about running for president, Murphy responds that he is happy representing Connecticut in the Senate, saying he loves his job.

Surely Murphy easily will cruise through a re-election campaign for his Senate seat next year.

I think Connecticut is happy with its junior senator, who seems to work hard, both at pursuing a Washington agenda and spending lots of time with constituents here on the home front.

He is maybe a bit left of Connecticut’s political center, but I think he generally well represents the moral spirit of the state, from protecting health care benefits as Obamacare is threatened to standing ground on the need for sensible gun control.

And yet I don’t see what Bannon

must, in assessing Murphy’s presidential prospects.

I think of him as too invested in the Democratic political establishment, rowing Hillary Clinton’s boat and not Bernie Sanders’, at a time when America seemed to hunger for an upset and change.

I don’t see Murphy bringing along traditional but disillusioned Democrats from the middle of America who didn’t turn out for Clinton. He’s young but a career politician, and I don’t see him electrifying millennials, either.

I hear from him a lot of fiery rhetoric about Republican extremism, but I don’t hear inspiration, like I did from Sanders, about remaking an increasingly unequal and unfair America.

The best example of the senator’s unfortunate political pragmatism was his endorsement of President Trump’s pick to head the Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, the Republican he beat to win his Senate seat.

Crazy me, I believed Murphy when, on the campaign trial, he railed about McMahon abusing workers, denying health benefits in a physically challenging business and corrupting our youth with violent and misogynist television programing.

If Bannon is looking for dirt on Murphy, he need dig no deeper than McMahon’s bag of tricks, which was full of nasty opposition research that she deployed in her unsuccessful campaign.

I guess we can chalk Murphy’s McMahon endorsement up to more political opportunism in the time of Trump.

If this keeps up, Connecticut may again field a presidential candidate, maybe this time facing off tweet to tweet, both hunting down the praise and cameras.

What fun.