It’s not the first time a candidate has undergone a radical makeover in the course of seeking higher office. But it’s always sad to see.
Within the last few years, Kerry Healey saw MCAS in shades of grey, expressing concern about how “frightening” it was to have an hours-long test be a graduation requirement, and proposing that students be able to earn a diploma without passing it. She saw CORI access as a complex issue worthy of serious discussion, recognizing that it was important for offenders who have paid their debt to society to be able to find an apartment and get a job. She backed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as a sensible means of doing something about global climate change. She campaigned for indexing the minimum wage to the rate of inflation.
But that was Kerry Healey 1.0 — private citizen, candidate for state rep, member of the Criminal History Systems Board, even candidate for Lt. Gov. Now, of course, everything has changed. Now Kerry Healey wants to be governor, and she doesn’t think she can do it unless she adopts GOP talking point positions on “the issues.” So she’s rolled out Kerry Healey 2.0, and she’s flip-flopped on MCAS, CORI, RGGI, the minimum wage, and other issues, as we’ve documented in our ongoing “she was for it before she was against it” series.
Does this remind you of anyone? Like, say, the guy who won the Governor’s race in 2002? Mitt Romney 1.0, the candidate for MA Governor (and the candidate for US Senate in 1994), was a Republican moderate who spouted soothing words on the social issues that MA voters see somewhat differently from voters in, say, South Carolina. But his positions have “evolved,” to the point where Mitt Romney 2.0, the would-be presidential contender, is spouting as right-wing a line on most issues as anyone out there. “Evolved,” my eyeball.
This disease, needless to say, does not afflict only Republicans. John Kerry 3.0 (I think that’s what we’re up to) now profoundly regrets his vote in favor of the Iraq war. Where the hell was that guy in August of 2004??
In any event, it’s depressing that candidates like Kerry Healey think they need to do this. It shows weakness, it shows lack of conviction, it shows lack of character. I’m glad that Deval Patrick has stood behind his work on the Songer case — work that was subsequently vindicated by Justice Scalia’s unanimous opinion for the US Supreme Court. I, like most of Patrick’s supporters, wish Patrick had been similarly forthright about his role in the Ben LaGuer case. What he actually did was entirely defensible — in particular, helping the DNA test happen was exactly the right thing to do given the serious doubts about LaGuer’s trial. For the life of me, I cannot understand why doing a DNA test can be considered anything other than pursuing justice. If it exonerates the guy, you know you had a false conviction, and nobody wants that. If it doesn’t, the guy stays behind bars. What’s the problem?
In any event, Patrick hurt himself by, as Jay says, allowing the LaGuer story to become one of those dreadful “drip-drip” affairs. That was a big mistake, as Patrick has already stated. It was completely out of character for him and his campaign, which with that one exception have consistently stood on principle, even when doing so looked like it might cost them votes, and even when a lesser candidate or campaign organization might have flinched. On Ameriquest, Killer Coke, the tax rollback, and a bunch of other issues, Patrick stood proudly behind his record and calmly explained why he did what he did. As a result, voters may have agreed or disagreed, but they respected that he did what he did because he thought it was the right thing to do.
And that is what Kerry Healey seems unable to do on anything. MCAS? She didn’t remember what she thought back in 2000. CORI? She “became aware of the need for change within the system” — whatever that means (it obviously doesn’t explain her votes). RGGI? No explanation, she just followed Romney. Minimum wage? No idea why she flip-flopped, other than she was blindly following Romney on a position she didn’t agree with. Nice show of character there.
I don’t expect to agree with any candidate on every issue. I disagree with Deval Patrick on some (I favor basically unlimited access to records of criminal convictions, and I think the legislature should vote on the anti-marriage amendment, to name just two). But more important to me than a list of individual issues is this: I want a candidate to know where he or she stands, to have a principled basis for standing there, and to be unafraid to defend that stance even if it may appear unpopular. On (almost) every occasion, Deval Patrick has done that. That’s the guy I endorsed in the primary, and that’s the guy I want to be our next Governor.
Please let us not repeat this canard. It’s enough Rethuglicans do.
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At the time the resolution came up, the Bush Administration was telling everyone who would listen that they were pursuing diplomatic solutions, that their intent to start a war would only be a “last recourse”. As Suskind, Woodward, et al. have documented, they were lying. They planned to go to war anyway, but that’s not what they said.
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Kerry’s position was a reasonable one — especially if you were under the illusion that the Bush Administration knew what it was doing. The threat of military action would be a useful diplomatic tool. Many of us were not under the illusion that the Administration was minimally competent, correctly suspected its true intent, and became furious at Kerry for his vote.
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On the other hand, it is typically duplicitous of the Republicans to say that this vote was “for” the war. It wasn’t. It was for the power to go to war. Kerry’s position has actually been quite consistent about this, too. He really did think that the giving the President the ability to threaten was necessary at the time. Were Gore in office, that might have been a very sensible vote.
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Two things suprise me here.
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First, that so many Democrats forget this history. We’re not talking the XYZ Affair. This is recent.
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Second, why a vote that the Republican Administration sold as a vote for peace they can now claim as a vote in support of a war.
that bothers me so much. It’s his statement in Aug 2004 that he would have voted the same way, even if he knew back in ’03 everything that he knew in ’04. IMHO, that’s the day that John Kerry lost the election.
It was when he let the Swift Boaters swiftboat away right in the middle of his convention, all the while his convention was one big Vietnam Veteran Parade… which didn’t help when he was getting slammed – and not responding to those slams – on a daily basis. That’s what killed him. Otherwise, he would have had momemtum building far quicker than he did (after the first debate).
Kerry Healey 1.0 may have had a shot at getting elected. She’s in the wrong state to use GOP style talking points. While Mitt Romney won and – by all means – he’s a conservative, when he ran he pretended to be moderate. People, for some strange reason, bought it.
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Sadly, they’re not into buying too many Republican Talking Points today. If she ran with her gut feelings on issues, she’d have had a much better shot. For one thing, she may not appear as cold if she weren’t having to lie 50% of the time… and a lot of the GOP talking points just won’t fly in Massachusetts, but questioning CORI, minimum wage, etc. will.
I disagree with Deval Patrick on some (I favor basically unlimited access to records of criminal convictions . . .
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I would agree with you on this if the system were easily decipherable and accurate. Anyone whose had to deal with the NCIC records knows that the accuracy of the records is very questionable. Plus, those records depend on law enforcement to enter the information which creates a stream on information that hard for lawyers to understand, far less lay citizens. In addition, I think arrests are what generate such records, not convictions, which results in whole lot of irrelevant and potentially invasive information being perpetuated.
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Once the cat is out of the bag, it’s too late.
there’s lots of room for improvement. Certainly, data should be accurate and reasonably easy to interpret. And I could see limiting public access to convictions rather than arrests. But to me, the basic principle is that criminal convictions are public records, freely accessible to anyone, and the fact that it’s easier to find them if they’re on the internet than if you have to track down records in a bunch of county courthouses doesn’t mean we should keep them off the internet. Public information is public information.