Say it ain't so, Mike!

Below is my column as submitted from the March, 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine, Page 18. It's something odd from moi, showing love to a politician I never voted for.

There is only one thing worse in life than to have one’s heroes exposed as less than noble.  It is a personal disaster to hear that someone you never felt warm and fuzzy about does something that forces a reappraisal.

Sadly, Michael Stanley Dukakis has done that to me.  I could never warm to the man.    It’s part of my class warrior persona.  You always got the feeling that the Duke was talking down to you and telling you that you had to take the bad tasting medicine because it was good for you.

The Duke, on his rise seemed over promoted.  There was the No Fault Auto Insurance that he successfully steered through the General Court.  Was that the panacea as promised?  For all one knows, it might be the best of all possible worlds.  We do still pay a lot for car insurance here.

In his successful run for governor, the bumper stickers read, “Mike Dukakis Should Be Governor.”  The tone of the campaign was that the messiah would relieve us from the scourge of the usual hacks.  The man was almost too good for us.

In his first term, he was celebrated for taking the MBTA to the Corner Office.  If it was an attempt to connect with the common man by an uncommon man, it did not work.  An electorate that had not forgot his broken “lead pipe guarantee” of no tax increase put him on hiatus for a term.

Back in office, he would tout the short-lived improvement in the state economy as the “Massachusetts Miracle.”  He hoped it would get him across the Potomac, but his presidential candidacy in a literal sense “tanked.”

There would be another call for new taxes as he entered the lame duck zone.  The governor would promote the still controversial Big Dig and would leave a bad taste in our region for supporting a prison in New Braintree that smelled of a sweetheart deal.

His ambition was immense, but so was his desire to make a difference.  A controversial English politician who experienced it said, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” True enough, Mike left office unloved and unlamented.

His post-electoral life is sweet.  Few remember that he could not get elected dogcatcher after his last term.  The Duke has his academic sinecure and enjoys the plaudits of his class.

Contrast Dukakis with another Massachusetts pol, the late Congressman John Joseph Moakley.  You remember him.  Well, you probably don't.  He was not flashy and though he had a long career, his congressional accomplishments escape my mind.  His constituents probably don't remember them either.

His big claim to fame was that he defeated Louise Day Hicks.  If you remember her, you are either a politics nerd or you are giving away your age.  She had opposed forced busing when chairwoman of the Boston School Committee.  Louise was crazy enough to think that the idea of putting kids on buses and shipping them off to neighborhoods not their own in an ethnically fractious city was absurd.  She was delusional enough to believe that her opposition could lead to a successful political career.

All the great and good got behind Joe to defeat Hicks' congressional re-election bid.  Joe said nothing.  It was better for him not to.  He won and went on to an extended tenure as a mediocrity in the nation's capital.

I was reminded that he was still alive shortly before his death.  A new federal courthouse was to be named after him.  On WBZ news one morning, I heard it mentioned and one of the solon's flacks was asked about it.  I can never forget his comment, “Joe, in his own humble way, this was the only building he wanted named after him.” 

The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse is an ornate architectural monstrosity.  Maybe it's not on the scale of the pyramids, but Joe was no Amenhotep.  When looking at it, one would not say this is the memorial to a humble man.

On January 31 The Boston Globe reported that it was proposed that South Station be named The Governor Michael S. Dukakis Transportation Center at South Station.  No news there.  As noted above, structures are named after public figures.  Usually a man who, in the words of Macbeth,  “struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”  There may be a couple of geezers left who remember Maurice Tobin of Tobin Bridge fame, but who the heck is Leonard Zakim of the Zakim Bridge?*

It was Michael Stanley's reaction that shocked me.  He said No.  Had I a pacemaker, the battery would have shorted.  This may not be unprecedented, but who has years to research it?  One should not cavil at the act.  Even if his reasoning might not be mine, it's still a noble sentiment and it pains me to say, a humble gesture.

So Governor Duke, you have my admiration, but I will never forgive you for making me give up my resentment.

*I looked him up once and completely forgot who he was a minute later.  All I remember is that he was, in the words of the late Jerry Williams, “not a bad guy.”