Tom Keane

DeFranco could help Warren save her campaign

Elizabeth Warren should be wishing Marisa DeFranco well Saturday, hoping she makes it on the Sept. 6 Democratic primary ballot. Politicians don’t normally like challengers — indeed, Warren’s entire campaign has been all about clearing the field — but in this case DeFranco’s upstart campaign may offer something Warren desperately needs: A way to save her campaign.

Getting on a primary ballot requires two things: enough signatures and the party’s consent. DeFranco, an immigration lawyer from the North Shore, has already managed the first. And at the Democratic Party’s annual convention in Springfield today, she’s hoping for the second: approval from 15 percent of the gathered delegates. She may pass that hurdle — or not: Powerful forces in the state are allied against her.

Warren is in deep trouble, a predicament whose genesis begins about a year ago. Scott Brown, the miraculous winner in January 2010 against Attorney General Martha Coakley, was polling as the most popular politician in the state. A large field of Democratic challengers had started to form, one that included state Representative Tom Conroy, Alan Khazei (the founder of City Year), Setti Warren (the mayor of Newton), and at least four others, including DeFranco. Yet, before any of those candidates had even begun seriously to campaign, the conventional wisdom was that none of them had a chance of beating Brown. To national Democrats, who are singularly focused on keeping the Senate in Democratic hands, that was unacceptable.

In retrospect, the conventional wisdom is suspect. Brown had won his race by a narrow margin of just of 109,000 votes out of 2.2 million cast. His sky-high post-victory polls likely didn’t mean that the almost 1.1 million voters who supported Coakley were now GOP converts. More likely, it was simply a reflection of people’s take that — despite differing with him on issues — he was a likeable guy.

But polls change quickly when voters are confronted with a clear choice — candidate A versus candidate B. With the race still in its early infancy, Brown was in effect getting a free ride. That probably wouldn’t have been the case after a year of campaigning had produced a candidate the Democrats could unite behind. (Indeed, the fact that now it is Coakley who is the state’s most popular politician shows just how disconnected election results are from polls.)

Nevertheless, the national party wasn’t taking chances, and so unfolded an almost shameful tale. Warren, a hero to national Democrats (albeit unknown locally and a neophyte politician) was anointed their candidate. Those already in the race had little choice but to exit and dutifully, they did (the exception was DeFranco, apparently not the type to kowtow). In effect, Bay State voters were told that their opinion as to who should be their nominee was unwanted. The mandarins in Washington would choose for them.

That was a mistake. The mistake isn’t that Warren is a bad candidate — she’s actually potentially quite good — but that Democrats lost sight of the fact that primary contests aren’t mere procedural annoyances. They are critical tools for vetting, seasoning and strengthening a candidate. If Warren had been part of a robust primary, competing for voters’ favor against a large field of other credible candidates, she’d have had to learn how to be a candidate — a very different skill set from being an academic — and how to manage the rough and tumble of a dynamic, intense, and exhausting race. She’d have had to figure out how to persuade voters why she — and not her opponents — was best able to take on Brown. And when (what should have been a small) scandal came, as it did with her claims of Indian heritage, she would have been able to deal with it as part of the scrum — under some scrutiny, yes, but not the subject of unrelenting headlines day after day.

Admittedly, DeFranco is not the strongest candidate Warren might have had to face. Still, a genuine primary race would enable Warren to start fresh. Up to now, her candidacy has smacked less of democracy and more of a queen waiting for her coronation. If she is instead forced to earn her nomination, she’ll be the better for it.

This column originally appeared on the Boston Globe's op-ed page on June 2, 2012.

Rhode Island’s fool’s game with Curt Schilling

I have never felt so proud to be a Massachusetts resident upon hearing how Curt Schilling snookered Rhode Island.

An overstatement, perhaps. But still, the Commonwealth is coming out a rose on this one. Rhode Island is staring in the face of a possible $75 million (or more) loss to its taxpayers after Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios LLC, just defaulted on a $1.1 million loan payment due the state. Meanwhile, Massachusetts (the Evergreen Solar state, lest one forget our own transgressions) improbably looks to be a fount of conservative, fiscal rectitude. How did we manage to pull that off?

Schilling (Martha Coakley’s favorite Yankee fan), a pitcher of no small renown who is also a video game fanatic, started up 38 Studios (nee Green Monster Games) in 2006, basing it in Maynard. Even while he was still with the Red Sox, it sometimes seemed as if Schilling’s true passion was less on-the-field than it was on-the-couch. A few years after leaving the game of baseball, Schilling set up a new game in 2010: tug-of-war, one that pit the Bay State against the Ocean State.

Rhode Island pulled first, proffering a $75 million loan guarantee to 38 Studios if it would move operations to the state. In effect, that guarantee was an investment in the company — the state’s credit rating got 38 Studios the money and it was the state’s citizens who were on the hook for any losses.

Schilling then went back to Massachusetts to see what it would offer. He had a pretty compelling case. He was, after all, a near demi-god; the man whose bloody sock broke The Curse. And Massachusetts, desperate to pump up its “creative economy” industries, was eager to become a video gaming hotspot. Plus, there was the potential embarrassment and political fallout of losing out to Rhode Island.

And incredibly, Massachusetts refused to play.

There were talks, but they didn’t come to much. “It was very hard to get to anyone,” Schilling complained at the time. Granted, back then the state was broke and it didn’t have in place a loan program along the lines of Rhode Island’s. Still, if it had wanted to, it could have come up with something. Instead, Housing & Economic Development Secretary Gregory Bialecki said through a spokesperson, “We are not willing to get into a bidding war.”

Kudos to Bialecki and the state for resisting. Rhode Island’s deal was never a good one: $75 million for a pure startup promising 450 jobs (which works out to a hard-to-believe $166,000 for each new hire). Even many in Rhode Island — including current Governor Lincoln Chafee — were opposed. (One has to feel sorry for Chafee, who is now in the unhappy position of trying to fix a mess left by his predecessor — and prime advocate of the loan guarantee — Donald Carcieri.)

Still, the problem with Rhode Island’s loan guarantee to 38 Studios isn’t that it was a bad deal. It’s that the state had no business doing it in the first place.

States love to compete against each other for economic development, using loan guarantees, tax breaks, and other favors to lure companies away. It’s a fool’s game. Absent extraordinary circumstances (such as a failure of capital markets), making such investments in individual businesses is the province of private investors, not government. (The unwillingness of private investors to put money in 38 Studios itself speaks volumes.) Government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers. Indeed, it is uniquely unsuited for the job. Success to investors is measured by profits. Success to government is measured differently — jobs created, taxes collected, social welfare, environmental concerns, and so on. When the two conflict (e.g., if productivity improvements mean shedding jobs), government will be under pressure to make decisions that undermine the long-term profitability of a company.

The best way for states to improve their economies is to make conditions better for all businesses, not just a favored few. Companies need government to create educated employees, good infrastructure, safe communities, level playing fields, fair taxes, and predictable rules. Do those things well, and local economies will grow. Rhode Island would have been better off building new schools than the Kingdoms of Amalur.

 This column originally appeared on the Boston Globe's op-ed page on May 19, 2012.

The Boston waterfront has arrived

It feels like the newest, coolest, and most vibrant part of the city, pulsating with activity, suddenly crammed with tourists — and even longtime Boston residents.

Boston’s waterfront has exploded in the public consciousness. It feels like the newest, coolest, and most vibrant part of the city, pulsating with activity, suddenly crammed with tourists — and even longtime Boston residents — who marvel at newly discovered delights around every corner of its 47 miles.

That’s right: 47 miles. The waterfront stretches from the southernmost tip of Dorchester through South Boston, to downtown, the North End, Charlestown, and finally to East Boston. Eighty-five percent of the shore is pedestrian-friendly, part of the groundbreaking public way known as the HarborWalk. New apartments and condos are popping up everywhere, notably in South Boston, but also, hopefully, East Boston. And the list of attractions along its course is staggering. There are the marquee names (the USS Constitution, the Aquarium, the soon-to-reopen Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum), parks galore (including the launching point to one of the most stunning of them all, the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area), and myriad smaller amusements (tasting room of Harpoon Brewery, anyone?). And, of course, there are the retailers and restaurants that stretch its length, upscale and everyday, famous chefs and casual cooks. More are slated as eager businessmen and women, sensing money to be made, realize that the waterfront, no longer ignored and neglected, has arrived.

It’s been a long time coming. When road builders in the 1950s erected the “highway in the sky” — the elevated expressway — the land they chose lay right along the edge of the harbor. “Waterfront simply wasn’t valued,” says Richard Dimino, Boston’s transportation commissioner from 1985 to 1993 and now head of the business association A Better City. By 1988, the region’s abuse of Boston Harbor — widely known as “the dirtiest harbor in America” — was a national story, an attack line used by Vice President George H.W. Bush that helped derail the White House ambitions of Governor Michael Dukakis. “Two hundred years ago, tea was spilled in this harbor,” Bush said on a chartered boat in Boston that year. “Now it’s something else.” He was, sadly, correct. The harbor was little more than the metropolitan area’s sewer, a dead, stinking zone that repulsed anyone who got near.

But even as Bush was beating up on Dukakis, things were changing. A series of lawsuits brought in the mid-1980s resulted in a decision by US District Judge A. David Mazzone forcing a cleanup. Many years and more than $4.5 billion later, things are different. Since the new Deer Island sewage treatment plant began going online in 1995, the harbor has been restored by measures obvious (smells and floating feces) and not-so-obvious (water quality and the return of marine life). It has become today, almost unbelievably so, what the Environmental Protection Agency called “a great American jewel.”

But making the harbor into a place folks could love didn’t mean they could actually enjoy it. The elevated expressway, unregulated development, and years of mistreatment had left the waterfront almost inaccessible. And landowners along the way had built right up to the water’s edge. So even if people could get to the water, there weren’t many places they could go without hitting a dead end.

On a Monday night in late April, several hundred folks gather at the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf for a fund-raiser on behalf of The Boston Harbor Association, one of many advocacy groups that for years fought often lonely battles on behalf of the harbor. The association’s signature issue was the HarborWalk, a project that had its genesis under Mayor Raymond Flynn and focused on one simple goal: Make the entire waterfront accessible to the public.

The plan had an element of the quixotic to it (who even cared about the harbor?), with proponents often belittled as they harangued landowners over something that seemed so inconsequential. But that’s changed, as evidenced by the heavyweight guest list for this event, one that features financiers, developers, and senior government officials. The fund-raiser, billing itself a “celebration,” bubbles with the enthusiasm of those who see a long-sought objective within reach.

On a bright Saturday afternoon, I walk portions of the waterfront with the association’s president, Vivien Li. The HarborWalk is filled with pedestrians and bicyclists. Families picnic. Couples stroll hand in hand. Li points out the new headquarters for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, two 18-story buildings under construction near the ICA; empty sites ready for hotels and housing; and the location of the $5.5 million Boston Innovation Center, which would have its groundbreaking on May 1.

The HarborWalk is one critical piece of infrastructure that helps make the waterfront accessible, but certainly not the only one. The most visible efforts, in fact, were the tearing down of the elevated expressway in 2003 and 2004 and the construction of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Where once there was a huge, green barrier (Mayor Thomas Menino used to call it “Boston’s other green monster”), now clean water beckons, aided by the city’s own “crossroads initiative” to reconnect its streets to the shoreline.

Then, too, there is the much-mocked Silver Line, a mass-transit link between Logan International Airport and South Station. The stations on the South Boston Waterfront initially seemed oversize and unneeded. Now, as cranes loom above them, they are better understood as a lure attracting billions of dollars in investment.

There are still risks. Development is concentrated on the South Boston Waterfront, but while the money is largely in place, another financial crisis like the one in 2008 could derail everything. The city has big ideas for new dwellings in East Boston, but they are still dreams that depend, in part, on a successful rollout of a water shuttle that would connect Maverick Square to Fan Pier. And there is a kind of chicken-and-egg problem that confronts the creation of any neighborhood. People are attracted to areas where there are basic amenities — supermarkets, for example. But those amenities won’t open until there are actually new residents. Residents and retailers both need to make a leap of faith.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that Boston’s center of gravity is shifting, moving away from Back Bay and downtown and toward the harbor. There is something about the water that stirs the soul, and it is remarkable how for so long Boston had figuratively turned its back on that water. Today, the city is reorienting itself.

None of this happened by accident. While many players had significant roles, the waterfront’s revival was fundamentally driven by good government — a phrase you don’t hear much these days. It is, argues former city councilor Lawrence DiCara, a shining example of how “activist government triggers economic development.” The story is a complex one, but the shorthand version is that it required the leadership of a succession of politicians and agencies — federal, state and local. That roster included, notably, Menino and the city’s planning agency, the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The aim was to do it right — there wouldn’t be second chances — so everyone took a long and measured view. “We could have done it earlier,” says Menino, “but we were choosy.”

The BRA has suffered its slings and arrows; it is still, one BRA planner laments, “haunted by the West End,” the tragic decision to demolish an entire neighborhood during the 1950s era of urban renewal. The waterfront, a series of new neighborhoods unfolding before us, may well exorcise those ghosts.

 Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine on May 13, 2012.

The thin veneer of civilization

The Bruins lose, and a swarm of racist tweets targets the black Washington Capitals player who scored the winning goal. Five near-naked, shivering Boston University students are found in an Allston basement, victims of a fraternity hazing. Middle- and high-school students torment their fellow students on Facebook and other social media, pushing some to misery, others — such as South Hadley’s Phoebe Prince — to suicide.

Bostonians have been patting themselves on the back for some time now, telling pretty much anyone who would listen how the city has changed since the bad old days of busing. That self-congratulation is now on hold as the old doubts come back.

So too, the recent spate of hazing incidents (others include a stomach-churning account from Dartmouth College and — proving it’s not just a guy thing — a brutal incident at Penn State) raises questions. These are some of the country’s finest schools, populated, presumably, by some of the country’s best and brightest. Yet what kind of ethics do these college students have? After four years of learning how best to torment their fellow students, one shudders to think of the harm they’ll wreak after graduation.

Meanwhile, bullying in grade school is reaching what some call epidemic levels. The federal government, for example, estimates that it happens to at least 20 percent — and perhaps as many as 28 percent — of all children.

One can advance a host of explanations for what’s going on. Maybe hockey fans are just more boorish. Perhaps frats and sororities attract the sociopathic. And grade schoolers are just barely past the age of reason, perhaps unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

All those speculations may be true, but what I really think is this: In every case, they thought they could get away with it.

The tweeters believed themselves to be anonymous. (An error embraced by seemingly all of the digerati is that online communications are private. In fact — as the tweeters themselves are learning — they are not.) Members of fraternities and sororities are in a world reminiscent of “The Lord of the Flies,’’ acting as if — having left the strictures of home but not yet living in the real world — their behavior has no consequences. Children on Facebook and other social media also believe themselves anonymous. Bullying — in the past more directly confrontational — has now become cyberbullying, with levels of cruelty far greater than the pushes and shoves of a pre-Internet world.

One can see this as well in the comments pages of online newspapers and magazines. When commentators believe themselves to be nameless, they will flame and insult with abandon, saying things they almost certainly wouldn’t say to someone face-to-face. Make those same commentators identify themselves, and the vitriol (and number of comments) drops sharply.

It’s enough to make one despair. The veneer of civilization, it appears, is remarkably thin, a front we put on when others are paying attention. But if we think we are unobserved, if we think there are no penalties to behaving badly, the ugly side of our nature emerges.

But this may be too grim of a conclusion. Consider another form of anonymity: the ballot box. During the 2008 election, few if any admitted their votes would be affected by race. But how many actually were? Last November, a novel study conducted by Harvard researcher Seth Stephens-Davidowitz concluded that racism cost Obama between 3 to 5 percentage points of the vote.

That’s not good, but it’s not bad either. The converse conclusion of Stephens-Davidowitz’ study is that at least 95 percent of voters made their decisions without regard to race. A generation ago, that almost certainly wouldn’t have been the case. Today, it appears, racism is now not only socially unacceptable, but a vast majority of people have internalized that standard as well.

So yes, the tweets after the Bruins’ loss were disturbing. But not everyone with a Twitter account posted racist tweets — only a few. I suspect that the same is true of bullying and hazing. It happens and it’s awful, but it doesn’t mean civilization is on the verge of collapse. Just because anonymity causes some people to behave badly doesn’t mean all of us do.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on May 5, 2012.

Mitt Romney’s general election chances are better than people think

The race for the GOP nomination is over — really, Newt — and Democrats should be feeling pretty good. Barack Obama’s polling numbers have bounced back from their lows of last summer. The wealthy Mitt Romney, meanwhile, seems out of touch with ordinary voters. His “likability gap” is rivaled only by his gender gap. With employers finally hiring, the US economy is perking up. People are angry about rich folks getting tax breaks. And over the last six months, the Republicans have managed to alienate some of the largest voting blocs out there, notably women and Hispanics.

Then too, there were the bruising, nasty Republican primaries, which seemingly left Romney in tatters. Rather than concede the obvious — that he eventually would be the nominee — a series of Not-Mitts launched attack after attack aimed at taking him down. The Republican race was a Democratic dream; the conspiracy-minded might credibly wonder whether the Democratic National Committee had been secretly funneling money to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Given all that, one would think Romney would be well behind Obama. Yet three new polls — one a CBS News/New York Times survey, one by Pew Research, and one by Gallup — show a virtual tie. That’s a startling result for a candidate who’s been put through the wringer, a result that suggests that Romney’s prospects are actually good. Here’s why:

The base is secure. During the primaries, pundits marveled at the anybody-but-Romney dynamic that motivated the rise of a host of conservative challengers. But will conservatives’ unhappiness with the middle-of-the-road Romney mean they’ll reject him in November? Not a chance. According to the Gallup Poll, 90 percent of Republicans say they’ll vote for him over Obama. After all, they have nowhere else to go.

It’s all up from here. Freed from attacks from within, Romney will now begin to re-introduce himself to the electorate. It’s true his reputation took a beating in the primaries. So too did Obama’s during his epic 2008 battle with Hillary Clinton. But the nominating process is mostly inside baseball, and a series of biographical ads can do much to repair Romney’s image with the general public, particularly since his family takes wholesomeness to a level that rivals the Cleavers. Voters may not necessarily want to have a near-beer with the former governor, but they should start to feel better about him.

The general election is independents’ day. Much of what hurt Romney during the primaries was having to kowtow to his party’s right wing. That’s over. The Etch A Sketch is now ready for a vigorous shaking, which is to say, Romney is now free to begin wooing the critical independent voters who will decide the election, a group he mostly had to ignore during the race for the nomination. He’ll soften his positions on divisive issues like immigration, play down social issues, and focus on the economic arguments that were the original heart of his candidacy.

Whatever doesn’t kill me . . . On several occasions during the primaries, Romney brushed off the attacks from his opponents, saying (likely through gritted teeth) that they had made him “tougher.” That’s probably true. It’s certainly hard to imagine a line of attack that wasn’t exploited during the primaries. When similar attacks emerge from the Obama camp, Romney should be better prepared to handle them.

Ya never know. The unpredictable can wreak havoc in a campaign, of course. An attack on the United States, for instance, generally helps the incumbent. Meanwhile, Romney’s remarkable ability to commit gaffes will doubtless provide both comedy and consternation in the coming months. Still, the greater risk is to Obama. In recent days, we’ve seen the head of the General Services Administration resign over a party in Las Vegas, US soldiers making light of the dead, and Secret Service members carousing with prostitutes. This is the kind of stuff that, closer to Election Day, can change votes.

In conclusion . . . If I were betting, I’d still put money on Obama to pull out a win. The economy is the biggest issue in this election, and it’s working in his favor. Intrade, the on-line forecasting site, is currently predicting a 60 percent chance of an Obama victory, with only a 38 percent chance for Romney. Meanwhile, the website Real Clear Politics figures that 227 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win are leaning Obama’s way.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t bet a lot.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on April 21, 2012.

Indictments, then politics as usual

TWO HIGH-PROFILE prosecutions — one against senior officials in the state’s Probation Department, another aimed at former treasurer Tim Cahill — are after more than mere convictions. They seek instead to change entirely the culture of politics in Massachusetts. More likely, all they’ll do is just drive deeper underground the behaviors they target.

Two weeks ago, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz unveiled indictments against the Probation Department’s former head, John O’Brien, as well as two senior staffers. Ortiz charged that the department routinely ignored civil service rules, “institut[ing] a hiring system that catered to requests of Massachusetts legislators.’’ Ten days later, state Attorney General Martha Coakley dropped her own bombshell, indicting Cahill and two of his aides for using Lottery advertisements to promote Cahill’s image while he was embroiled in a campaign for governor.

In one case, the target is the age-old use of patronage. In the second, it is politicians routinely using their incumbency to burnish their credentials with voters.

The back-to-back indictments have caused much consternation among the political class. Patronage has been a common practice - and often seen as critical to effective governance - since the nation’s inception. Certainly, it’s an easy way to pay back folks for helping politicians in their campaigns. But it also helps make sure winners of an election get control of their offices, giving them the power they need to deliver on what they promised. Then too, particularly in immigrant cities such as Boston, patronage has been a way for those on the outside to make their way inside. When Irish-American politicians won, for example, they often gave jobs to their compatriots, thereby giving a helping hand to a marginalized group.

Good government groups, seemingly populated by folks who don’t need jobs and think politics should be a more elevated endeavor, despise patronage. That’s how we got civil service as well as the Supreme Court’s narrow 5-4 decision in a 1990 case (Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois) that barred “promotion, transfer, recall, and hiring decisions based on party affiliation and support.’’

But, the Supreme Court notwithstanding, patronage still happens, largely because it’s human nature. Politicians want to reward their supporters (and, of course, they also trust them more than the supporters of those they just beat) and so they use any variety of ways - a strong recommendation being the simplest - to signal to those making hiring decisions who they favor and who they do not.

Meanwhile, Coakley’s target — self-promotion — also is commonly practiced. As many have pointed out in the days following Cahill’s indictment, what is now being called criminal is no different from the stuff politicians do every day, from putting their names on signs adorning public works projects to traveling around the state trumpeting community grants. All boost the name of the incumbent using resources paid for by the state.

So are patronage and self-promotion now at an end? Not with these cases.

Ortiz alleges that O’Brien’s circumvention of civil service was extraordinarily heavy-handed, with a system in place that involved a charade of interviews even though the winning applicant was known in advance. Yet so far, Ortiz has not indicted any legislators. If that remains the case, then we have a remarkable curiosity. Those in power who ask for the favors are apparently immune while those who execute those requests are not. One almost feels sorry for the indicted. What were they supposed to do - say no, thereby angering the legislators who are, in effect, their bosses?

And in the case of Cahill there was also a kind of heavy-handedness. According to the attorney general, Cahill’s real mistake was a trail of damning e-mails ostensibly connecting the ads to his campaign strategy. (When, oh when will folks figure out that e-mails, tweets, and postings are not private conversations?) If Cahill had simply kept his intentions to himself, he wouldn’t be facing prosecution today.

The over-the-top nature of the abuses Ortiz and Coakley target suggest that, once things calm down, not much will have changed. The lesson will be: Don’t be obvious. Politicians will still want to build their team and they’ll still want to promote themselves. But in doing so, they’ll need to learn the art of being subtle.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on April 7, 2012.

Boston rising

After years of inactivity, ‘a renaissance on steroids’

EVER SINCE the 2008 market crash, the metaphor for Boston has been the gaping hole in Downtown Crossing where Filene’s once thrived: a figurative hollowing out of the city. Granted, developer Millennium Partners now hopes to build on the site, but that’s a ways off and so the metaphor still holds: Something, it seems, is fundamentally wrong with Boston.

Not at all.

Walk around the city and you’ll find other holes in the ground. These, however, are filled with cranes and workers. It’s easy to dismiss them as nothing more than anecdotal - tentative signs of an economic recovery the Federal Reserve still views as tepid. Yet while the Fed’s assessment may well be true for the rest of the country, the situation in Boston is different. In Boston, big things are happening.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority expects 62 major residential projects to be built within the next few years. A third of those are already under construction. Their total projected cost is an amazing $9.8 billion, a level of spending that far exceeds that of the last four years and indeed is well more than in the years that proceeded the recession. The BRA estimates all this new activity will directly create 14,000 construction-related jobs (technically, 14,000 “job years’’ - that is, jobs lasting 12 months) and at least an equal number of jobs indirectly. Once built, the new dwellings will house over 20,000 new residents.

The new residential projects are everywhere - 2,070 units in South Boston and its waterfront, 888 in the Fenway, 1,665 downtown, 1,132 in the South End - and they extend to neighborhoods outside of the city’s core, including West Roxbury (with three new developments), East Boston (five), and Allston-Brighton (four).

For four years the city’s economy seemed almost paralyzed. Now it is emphatically on the move. Those in the construction trades, most obviously, have reason to be delighted. But there’s much more to the resurgence of residential building than new jobs and new money. That resurgence also speaks profoundly to the next phase of Boston’s renaissance, a renaissance driven not just by office towers in business districts, but rather a rediscovery of the city by people who not only work there, but also want to live there. “It’s a renaissance on steroids,’’ says Peter Meade, the BRA’s head. Last quarter alone, he observes, Boston broke ground for 1,000 new units of housing. He’s excited, and for good reason.

There was a time when it appeared that urban areas such as Boston were doomed. From a population high of over 800,000 in 1950, Boston suffered a dramatic exodus to the suburbs. By 1980, it was down to under 563,000. Since then, things have slowly reversed, with the population now at 618,000. Pushed by the Menino administration’s relentless focus on matters of safety and “urban mechanics,’’ Boston regained its reputation as a livable city.

But the magnitude of the projects now underway suggests that those modest gains are about to accelerate. Boston still has an image for being a sleepy burg. Meade predicts the next few years will see the city transformed into one filled with activity 18 hours a day.

No doubt, some won’t be happy about this. The NIMBY crowd would just as soon see nothing change - no new buildings, no new residents. Too bad. Vibrant and successful cities need more people, not fewer. There are too many places in Boston where, technically urban or not, it feels underpopulated.

Of greater concern is the nature of the new developments, which - averaging two residents per unit - are plainly geared toward couples, not families. And the new units’ high costs leave nagging worries about those with more modest incomes.

Improve the schools and perhaps more families return. And while wealth is a concern, the converse - a city with only the poor - is far worse. A thriving middle- and upper-income population gives Boston a tax base from which it can better extend a helping hand to those in need.

In a world of virtual communications, some wonder whether cities have much of a future. Builders with money to spend are betting just the opposite. I’m with them. The prospects have never looked so good.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on March 24, 2012.

Forced speech on tobacco firms threatens free speech for all

FREE SPEECH has been in the news lately. In the wake of Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown law student a “slut,’’ the ubiquity of vile commentary has caught public attention. CNN contributor Roland Martin tweeting an anti-gay comment and liberal talk show host Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a “dumb [expletive]’’ are just two more examples of a coarsening of political discourse that treats the ad hominem as argument and polarizes rather than illuminates.

Still, as offensive as it all may be, few would argue that there’s a role for legislation here. Most of us buy into the First Amendment to the Constitution - the one that says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.’’ We may not like Limbaugh’s words, but it’s hardly up to Congress to prohibit him from saying them.

But how about the reverse? Instead of passing a law banning certain speech, could Congress pass one requiring Limbaugh affirmatively to say certain things? Could it, for example, require him (or Clear Channel, his employer) to broadcast a message that taxpayers should pay for contraception? Or force him to voice approval for removing prayer from school?

Don’t laugh. In a different circumstance, the feds are trying to do exactly that.

In this case, it’s tobacco companies and not Limbaugh who are the objects of the government’s ire. Admittedly, liberals everywhere despise cigarette makers even more than right-wing talk show hosts, so it’s hard to muster up a lot of sympathy. Yet the point of rules such as those outlined in the Constitution isn’t to protect those who are popular — in that case no protection would be needed — but rather to defend those who are on the outs.

A 2009 federal law gave the US Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco, including requiring that cigarette packages display graphic anti-smoking ads covering at least 50 percent of each pack. The new ads are compelling stuff. One shows a man with a tracheotomy, cigarette in hand and breathing smoke out through the hole in his neck. A second displays a grotesque set of diseased lungs; a third features a dead man’s body on a gurney, metal autopsy stitches running down his chest. They are designed to provoke an emotional response - revulsion, disgust, even nausea.

Unlike cute brown camels, these images are designed to persuade folks not to smoke.

Granted, Mitt Romney’s claims notwithstanding, corporations really aren’t people. First Amendment law has long recognized that commercial speech is different from regular speech, and so subject to some regulation. That’s why we have nutritional information on the foods we buy, for instance, and it’s the same argument that so far has allowed the government to require warnings (e.g., “Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide’’). But the new law, tobacco companies felt, went well beyond providing factual information to requiring them to become advocates - and, of course, advocates for an argument they clearly don’t want to make.

So, naturally, they sued and last week they won round one, with the District of Columbia federal district court blocking the FDA’s rules. The decision was unequivocal. Forcing someone - even a company - to say something is little different from prohibiting people from speaking, wrote Judge Richard Leon. “For corporations as for individuals, the choice to speak includes within it the choice of what not to say,’’ he noted. The FDA has appealed and don’t be surprised to see this one eventually end up at the Supreme Court.

Personally, I think the FDA’s ads are a tactical mistake. Their scary luridness is so over-the-top that they risk backfiring, making smoking seem a cool way for teens to rebel - and smoking by kids has largely been the motive for the new rules.

But whether the ads are effective or not, Leon’s decision was the right one. We’re a nation of rules, and not exceptions. Giving government the power to compel tobacco firms to advocate a message also gives it the power to compel others to do the same. Maybe that wouldn’t bother you if the next target was Rush Limbaugh. But just suppose — after, say, Rick Santorum’s inauguration — it was Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, now obliged to proclaim the contraceptive merit of an aspirin between the knees.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on March 10, 2012.

A McGovern moment?

A general election disaster could give the GOP reason to rethink its message

THE BATTLE for the soul of the Republican Party comes to a head in Michigan and Arizona this Tuesday and on Super Tuesday just a week later. The moderate home of John McCain, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and even Ronald Reagan is under a withering assault from Tea Partiers and Bible Belters. The conservative marauders are not only at the gates, but it looks like they may take over.

Maybe it would be best if they did.

“Conservative’’ in this case does not mean “fiscal conservative.’’ It means someone who is socially conservative - anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, deeply Christian - and believes that government has the responsibility to push those values in the public sphere. It also means someone who largely rejects the ability of government to accomplish much good at all in other areas, be they economic, regulatory, environmental, or matters of social justice. That’s why, measured by today’s GOP politics, Reagan now looks the moderate.

And his protests about his “severely conservative’’ style of governing notwithstanding, so too is Mitt Romney. The rap on the former Massachusetts governor is that he is not an authentic conservative. That rap, as any Bay State resident who lived through the first years of his administration knows, is completely true.

And we all know what will happen if Romney wins the nomination. He’ll pivot quickly to appeal to independents, positioning himself as a moderate Republican in the tradition of those who have gone before him. Should he then lose - a prospect that seems ever more likely given the economy’s turnaround and the GOP’s own ugly infighting - the party’s right wing will seize on that loss as further proof that it shouldn’t try to be centrist. Indeed, a Democratic victory in 2012 against Romney would be almost pyrrhic, as it would likely cause the GOP to shift further rightward, making it even more obstreperous and unwilling to cooperate with Democrats.

So let the GOP nominate a Santorum or a Gingrich and get it out of its system. Let the GOP have, if you will, its George McGovern moment.

McGovern’s defeat in 1972 ultimately led to a long rethinking about the Democrats’ message. Some positions, especially those that seemed overtly anti-capitalist or urged American timidity in world events, were abandoned. So too the GOP needs to find out whether its newly ascendant conservative dogma appeals to mainstream America. My guess is that a contest featuring Santorum versus Obama would be a lot like McGovern versus Nixon: Santorum would get trounced. Political movements may be about ideology, but political parties are about winning, and should a conservative Republican get thumped in November - and in the process, drag down a lot of GOP senators and House members with him - the Republican Party will have to reassess.

It may not have to wait until then, however. Over the last several months, Romney has been desperately trying to appeal to conservatives, veering ever rightward as one conservative challenger after another has risen in the polls. It’s been a pathetic thing to watch and has justifiably fed into talk about his lack of sincerity.

But there’s no way Romney can run to the right of Santorum. The former Pennsylvania senator’s positions on contraception (opposes it), gays (reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell’’), and women in the workplace (better they should be at home) are so extreme that even the protean Romney can’t go there. Nor it seems, can voters. Two weeks ago, Michigan seemed out of reach to Romney, with Santorum ahead by 15 points in one poll. Now, as Santorum’s positions become better known, it’s close to a dead heat. There’s a real-world lesson for Romney here. His fiscal message may be a potential winner, something he seems to have forgotten in his pandering to his party’s conservatives.

Democrats have been enjoying the fracturing of the GOP during this primary season. But even they would admit that in the long run, it’s better to have two parties working toward common ends than a circumstance where one party is uncompromising and unbending. The GOP will eventually come to that realization as well - either soon (which would still give it a chance) or in November (when it would have none).

Originally published in the Boston Globe on February 25, 2012.

Make that Congressman Kennedy

WHEN NEOPHYTE Ted Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1962, he squared up against Massachusetts Attorney General Edward J. McCormack who warned that “the office of United States senator should be merited, and not inherited.“ Ted’s candidacy should be a “joke,’’ McCormack argued, “but nobody’s laughing because his name is not Edward Moore. It’s Edward Moore Kennedy.’’

Kennedy beat the McCormack by a margin of 2 to 1.

Plus ça change, plus c’est pareil. Joe Kennedy III has just jumped into the race to succeed Barney Frank and, let’s face it, the contest is over. Indeed, it never began. Fifty years later - a half century! - and the Bay State’s extraordinary, axiomatic, and unquestioning loyalty to the Kennedy name seems not to have wavered a bit.

Kennedy seems, by all accounts, a nice enough 31-year-old. Despite being raised in a famous family, he’s lived a largely anonymous life, working for the past several years as an assistant district attorney. Kennedy’s career to date is not an unusual profile for someone who might want to try his hands at politics. But it’s not the profile of a prohibitive favorite.

Yet - absent the extraordinary - he’ll win, just like his great uncle, by a margin of 2 to 1.

Really. A UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll conducted last week - before Kennedy’s formal announcement - put the tenderfoot ahead of Republican Sean Bielat by that margin. Boston city councilor Mike Ross, who toyed with the idea of moving back to his hometown of Newton to enter the Democratic primary, figured out the turf very quickly. Once Kennedy started nosing about, Ross smartly exited - churlishly claiming his reason was Congress was “dysfunctional and broken’’ (Really? Worse than the City Council?). Everyone else thinking about the race should consider following his lead.

And never mind the blather from Joe Kennedy that the race goes to the one “who goes out and earns it.’’ The guy is already ahead before anyone knows about his issues, priorities or other critical topics such as (and I’ll never forgive Bill Clinton for answering this one) boxers or briefs. He may work hard, but that won’t be why he’ll win.

He’ll win, as we all know, because of his last name.

By some lights, one can understand the pragmatic calculus of voters 50 years ago who gave Ted the nod. His brother was, after all, the president. Hence, Ted’s campaign slogan, “He Can Do More for Massachusetts.’’

But that Kennedy pull doesn’t do much in Washington anymore. Indeed, purely pragmatic politics would argue for Massachusetts electing Republicans, where they can have far more influence in a House of Representatives that almost certainly will be controlled by the GOP.

So why does that Kennedy name still matter? Perhaps it’s nostalgia for the days of Camelot and a yearning for its recreation. Perhaps too we’ve never unequivocally embraced our 1776 rejection of royalty. We still swoon when British royalty wed or visit our shores, and the Kennedys are a reasonable simulacrum.

But coupled with that, there is this: Kennedys are a known commodity. When Joe likely gets elected next November, while his last name may be paramount, his first name will be irrelevant. He could be any of the numerous members of the family, all of whom would get the same immediate attention from the electorate. That’s because, even though we supposedly know nothing about Joe Kennedy III, in truth, we know everything we need to know. We know how the family thinks and how the family thinks is how Joe will think.

The Kennedys not only inherit wealth and good hair, they also inherit a sense of public service and shared values. There’s no worry that Joe will turn out to be a conservative. No one believes that he’ll oppose abortion rights or somehow considers the poor best off left fending for themselves. Doubtless he’ll support national health care, just as he’ll advocate for taxing the wealthy.

When we elect the man, we’ll get the clan.

It’s been 14 months since a Kennedy last held national public office. It’ll be good to see one back again, perhaps the first of many. Who knows? Maybe the third generation can match the first.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on February 17, 2012.