I’m struck by the increasing presence of Ted Kennedy in advertising by the candidates running to replace him. The closer we get the more we hear his name and also hear of warm stories when paths were crossed and battles fought. Associations with Senator Kennedy work generally if you actually had one, and I think that Congressman Capuano is on safe ground with his references to legislation they were both familiar with.
I think the AG Coakley has also largely played the Kennedy card well; they didn’t have a particularly close relationship and she doesn’t claim one. She speaks of him as any of us would, as someone to learn from.
Mr. Pagliuca, it seems, cannot help himself, and his latest ad leaves me thinking the same thing every five minutes I see it on TV: Have you no shame, sir?
Mr. Pagliuca wrote a check to Mitt Romney in 1994. He did this out of loyalty. I cannot imagine he worked with Romney closely, shared his peculiar vision of job creation that included laying off long term workers of the firms they purchased, and did not vote for him as well.
“Mitt; I love you and I’ll write you a check, but you know I have to vote for Ted. He’s a friend!” His wife served on Romney’s finance team, he was a registered Republican at the time, and he helped the campaign by his financial support. He questions Kennedy’s correct characterization of the Ampad situation. I find it hard to believe he did not vote for Romney in 1994.
That said, he is certainly free to run for the United States Senate. But how he can do so and say that Ted Kennedy was his friend, that Kennedy would have wanted him to run, and that he was the greatest Senator of our state and the nation, and to use a Kennedy line in his latest commercial “The work goes on” baffles me.
If at some point after 1994 he came to realize he was wrong, and that Mitt Romney would not have been a better Senator than Ted Kennedy, I would be interested in hearing it. It would tell me more about him than I have been able to learn from his millions in ads. Mr. Pagliuca, you were either with the Senator, or with Romney, and it might hurt your friend to tell him why he wouldn’t have been a good Senator, but some of us would love to hear it, because I don’t think your ads will make us ever believe that you were always a progressive Democrat. You could spend all of your money and not sell that story.
But beyond that, the larger point is that we’re wrong to look to this election as replacing Ted Kennedy. Leverett Saltonstall was the senior senator when Ted Kennedy was elected in 1962. Kennedy picked up those responsibilities to the state after that. Kennedy’s successor as senior senator is John Kerry. He has been in the Senate for 25 years. He is best positioned to deliver on all of those things we relied on for so long. The winner on Tuesday will be the junior senator and will do well to carve his or her own identity.
My thoughts on the election. I appreciate the BMG outlet to get this off my chest. Now I can go back to watching TV with the expectation my blood pressure won’t spike now that I’ve unburdened myself.
Thanks for this post. You echo the feelings of so many who are annoyed at the constant invoking of Sen. Kennedy’s name in these political ads.
<
p>Ted Kennedy, Jr. made it clear that he and the family are still grieving their terrible personal loss and had no interest in becoming involved in the race. He further stated that if one of the candidates had been a close friend of his father he might have considered giving support and he named specifically Markey and Delahunt. I think that was his way of putting to rest any public perception that any of the four candidates were special friends of his Dad’s.
<
p>You have made the most pertinent point that the media and candidates may have missed altogether: THIS RACE IS FOR JUNIOR SENATOR. It is not to replace Ted Kennedy as Senior Senator, John Kerry has stepped into that role and must carry that mantle the best he can.
<
p>I have appreciated the fact that Coakley has not purported to be any kind of special friend or annointed torch carrier in this race as the others have been far too eager to do. She is running for JUNIOR Senator of Massachusetts…not to be a carbon copy of a man who could not possibly be duplicated.
<
p>As for Mr. Pagliucca’s over the top nonsense…he is taking someone’s advice. Someone is telling him that this is what he needs to say to the public to get elected. Someone is writing the copy and pitching the ads. Shame on him for taking their advice. He’s paid a fortune for it. He was willingly fleeced by pros who did not care a wit about his philosophy or background and were more than willing to use Sen. Kennedy’s name recklessly to do it..
It is the seat Kennedy held. He left big shoes to fill and remained very popular both politically and emotionally. It makes perfect sense to me that candidates are trying to pick up his mantle, moreso frankly than every GOP presidential candidate for the last several cycles trying to be the second coming of Reagan.
it took Sen. Kennedy 47 years to be able to carry that mantle…a Senior Senator’s mantle…none of the candidates running for Junior Senator could or would be expected to carry that same mantle as they begin at the bottom of the seniority pole. Sen. Kerry is our Senior Senator now. It is his honor and burden to take up where Sen. Kennedy left off as Senior Senator. Our new Junior Senator will have to make their own way, their own path and time and experience will tell how they do.
I’m reminded of the old story of the man who owned the hatchet Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Over the years the hatchet head blunted and needed to be replaced, and then of course the handle did as well, but it still occupied a place of honor in his house as an heirloom.
if only George had actually chopped down a cherry tree and lied about it. The myths of American history serve their purpose in allegory.
<
p>They should have put the discarded metal and wood on the matel to be admired…and someday sold on ebay.
<
p>