By Tom Barton

Republican Senator Johnny Isakson would never be mistaken for a preening, blowhard Washington politician who gets too much facetime on TV and who thinks they should reserve plenty of space for his blimp-sized noggin on Mount Rushmore.

Indeed, Isakson’s public profile is lower than the flattop haircut on a drill instructor who just emerged from a Parris Island, S.C., barber shop. But this is one of those election years when it’s good to lie low and keep your head down and not stand out in the crowd and make yourself an easy target. Indeed, if America had more elected officials on the job like Isakson, who’s well-known on Capital Hill as a hard-working, pragmatic lawmaker who is more interested in getting results than appearing with Jimmy Fallon or feuding with Megyn Kelly.

Isakson, who was in town two weeks ago to check out Gulfstream and to remind area Republicans that he’s on the ballot this year and is seeking his third term in the Senate, looks amazingly good when compared to other high-profile pretenders who want to make Washington their homes. He lacks the baggage of Hillary Clinton, whose stuffed suitcases would keep the baggage-handlers at Hartsfield-Jackson busy for the next 10 years. And unlike Donald Trump, Isakson dishes out less baloney than the cooks at a fat camp for super-sized vegans. Also, the former Atlanta businessman who hit it big running a large real estate company as a private citizen, isn’t about to Bernie Sanderize the country by putting capitalist job-producers in gulags and doing away with all check-out lines. And unlike Ted Cruz, a fellow member of the so-called World’s Most Exclusive Club, Isakson comes across as a nice guy you wouldn’t mind sharing dinner with, not an intolerant grouch who forgot what the Bible said about doing unto others and seems to have a Texas-sized sand spur in his underdrawers.

Thus Isakson, Georgia’s senior senator, who was sworn into office in the Senate in 2005 along with then-Sen. Barack Obama, should be a lock for a return trip to the Senate. He’s about the only candidate on the ballot who doesn’t require two hands to vote for this year — one hand to push the touch-screen button and the other to hold your nose. But Election Year 2016 has been loonier than a Bugs Bunny/Donald Duck cartoon festival and a year when no incumbent office-holder in Georgia should take anything for granted — whether he’s a respected, business-minded conservative congressmen or a hard-working county coroner like Savannah’s Bill Wessinger, who’s been so busy that the Metro police department’s homicide squad has him on speed dial.

Isakson has seen his share of hardly working stiffs in Congress, as he’s the only member of the Senate to serve as chairman of two committees — a superlative sign of respect by leaders in both parties and acknowledgement of his bi-partisan approach to problem-solving and serving this nation. Those committees are Veteran’s Affairs, which has been busy dealing with scandals that rocked VA health care facilities, and Ethics. He also has a seat on both Foreign Relations and the powerful Finance Committee, setting a busy daily agenda that would exhaust a much younger whippersnapper, let alone a guy who’s well into his Social Security years and is dealing with the curse of Parkinson’s disease.

If you didn’t know Isakson had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s three years ago, you wouldn’t know it from looking at him now. There’s no tremors that I could see and he appears just as cool-headed and unflappable as ever, even when he was the minority leader in the Georgia House back in the days when Georgia Democrats ate the GOP every day for breakfast.

“I’m doing great,” Isakson said about his health.

He looks just as splendid. The only noticeable aspect of Parkinson’s is that Isakson walks with a shuffling gait. But that’s minor. You could even call this old-timer’s gait a badge of honor, another sign of an older dude who has beaten life and is still above ground after 70 years. It’s nothing — there’s really no reason to be in an all-fired hurry all the time, unless you’re parked downtown in front of a Savannah parking meter.

Isakson’s mind remains as sharp as a new pack of Wilkinson’s. For instance, he correctly warned his own Republican Party not to ”manipulate” the upcoming GOP convention to deny Trump or Cruz the party’s nomination.

Quashing the two front-runners would be “a huge mistake,” he said. “It would take the GOP 40 years to recover from that,” as Republican leaning voters would feel betrayed and desert the party in droves.

Isakson rightly acknowledged that a “palpable anger” has gripped much of the nation, and incumbent politicians share much of the blame for underestimating the impact. But being the old pro, Isakson refused to get into the endorsement game at this point.

Instead, Isakson got much more animated about — of all things — the sorry price for cottonseed oil on the commodities market. This oil is apparently selling for far less than the cost to produce it, which is apparently a huge deal for some Georgia farmers — certainly a far bigger concern than President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republican-controlled Senate’s planned inaction, Isakson said, judging from a recent campaign swing through south Georgia. He called the Supreme Court flap a “non-issue” that mostly concerns the talking heads.

Are the Democrats who blocked nominees from Republican presidents during election years guilty of hypocrisy? Do Chairman Mao and Comrade Bernie share the same ideas from the Little Red Book regarding class struggle?

“There’s more hypocrisy in Washington than there is time to talk about it,” Isakson said before getting up to shuffle off to his next campaign appearance, as one of the few quality candidates worth voting for in a year known for the slimmest of pickings. In 2016, voting to return Johnny Isakson to the Senate is the cure for the common politician.