I never can remember whether that old sports maxim has it that the best offense is a good defense, or vice versa (creeping senility will do that to a person’s recollective mechanism). But I do know that politicians are constantly following whichever piece of advice is pertinent as they skate around the issues.

Case in point: During the early sessions of the current Senate hearings probing a possible illicit Chinese connection to campaign fund solicitations by Democrats at the highest level, Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey, got caught telling a fib on national television.

He said he hoped the hearings wouldn’t turn into the bashing of Asian-Americans, much like the 1951 Congressional hearings of the Mafia and organized crime had led to the bashing of Italian-Americans. He said his earliest political memory was of watching those 1951 hearings on television, and he condemned the allegedly virulent anti-Italian sentiment that followed.

The next day, Roll Call, a newspaper dedicated to covering Congress, pointed out that when the 1951 Kefauver hearings began Toricelli was not yet born, and when they concluded he was but 5 days old.

Oops.

Now, your average bloke, caught in such a blatant truth-bending venture, would at a minimum probably exhibit a blush of embarrassment, even if only in private, and under the right conditions he might even publicly apologize for his self-serving whopper. But not the distinguished senator from New Jersey. The man did not get where he is by being a blubbering touchy-feelie New-Age wimp about such trivialities.

When he was confronted with the discrepancy, Torricelli put the best-defense-is-a-good-offense gambit into play. On the 6 o’clock news, he told the NBC reporterette who questioned his honesty that she was exhibiting the same type of insensitivity that he feared would be applied to Asian-Americans and, quite frankly, her attitude was not at all helpful to the dialogue.

And I’m sitting there with jaw agape, taking it all in, and thinking, “So it’s all the reporter’s fault. This guy’s good. Little wonder that they keep voting for him in New Jersey…”

I do not mean to imply that politicians have exclusive rights to the “best-defense/offense” device as a means of putting the proper spin on things. Most of us have undoubtedly employed the strategy to our advantage at some point in our checkered careers. But it seems doubtful that many have mastered the art form so completely as has Brewer’s agile nemesis, popularly known around city hall as the unrelenting Tenant From Hell.

The Story Which Refuses To Die is by now familiar fare to readers of this newspaper, bubbling to the surface every so often, as it does, like another chapter of the long-running Perils of Pauline serial at the old Saturday afternoon matinee.

Since 1991, the woman has lived with her menagerie of pets under some sort of vague squatter’s rights lashup in a dilapidated, condemned house on Wilson Street, sans electricity and other amenities, and has successfully defied all attempts at eviction, even though she has never paid rent. The home, once privately owned and valued at $40,000, reportedly has plummeted in value as swiftly as it has fallen down around its occupant’s ears, until now it is said to be worth maybe $4,000. Because of a maturation of a sewer lien against the property, the building is now owned by the city, which has brought four civil actions against the tenant, two of which were recently heard in superior court before visiting Judge John Atwood of Knox County.

The defendant told the judge that she should have been given an opportunity to pay off the sewer lien, even though her refusal to pay sewer bills had led to the encumberance.

When a skeptical Judge Atwood asked her what she had supposed might happen if she didn’t pay her sewer bill, she reportedly responded, “I’m not a learned person, your honor. I guess I just don’t understand the judicial system.”

There is no record of whether the lady batted her eyelashes as she floated that one by the judge, or whether the judge batted his when he resisted replying that, to the contrary, the record clearly shows that she understands the system all too well.

Six years of striking out the establishment is an accomplishment that tends to prove the accuracy of that observation. The lady can bring it, as they say in baseball. Which puts in play another cherished sports cliche: Good pitching beats good hitting. Every time.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport.