Tom Keane

Invading New Hampshire

How the Bay State transformed its northern neighbor.

Veni, vidi, voti. I came, I saw, I voted. That's how -- 267 years after it broke away from our embrace -- Massachusetts ended up reconquering New Hampshire. The elections are long over, the winners are comfortably ensconced in their new offices, and it's now undeniably clear: The onetime anti-tax, anti-government, reddest-of-the-red states has now turned thoroughly Bay State blue. It's a victory that was a long time coming.

For decades, William Loeb, owner of the Manchester Union Leader, cracked the conservative whip, demanding that anyone with the temerity to run for office sign on to an ironclad no-taxes pledge. Democrats were scarce creatures. During the entire 20th century, Republicans held both US Senate seats 82 percent of the time.

The state's First Congressional District was Republican for 78 out of 100 years; the Second District was Republican for all but six of those years. Governors hailed from the GOP 80 percent of the time. The Legislature was comfortably Republican; indeed, one would have to go back to 1874 to find a time when both houses were controlled by Democrats. And, of course, the state was mostly Republican when it came to presidential races. In the 25 elections held in the 20th century, its voters chose the GOP nominee 18 times.

These red-solid results reflected the state's political ethos. The state motto, "Live Free or Die," was less a demand for liberty than it was an insistence that government get out of the way. And get out of the way it did. Even in 2004, according to the US Census Bureau, per-capita state and local spending in New Hampshire was a miserly $5,811 -- 35th of all the states. Massachusetts, by contrast, ranked fourth, at $7,561. Moreover, New Hampshire is one of only six states with a truly part-time legislature, paying state representatives $200 annually and senators an even more paltry $100. And why not? The hard-bitten residents of the land of the Old Man of the Mountain didn't need government. They were fine all by themselves, thank you.

How things have changed. Today, the governor is a Democrat. Both congressional representatives are Democrats. Republican John Sununu lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in November. Both houses of the Legislature are now solidly Democratic, and more than half the state voted for Barack Obama. Indeed, the only Republican politician of any note is three-term US senator Judd Gregg, who right now must be feeling awfully lonely.

There's a reason for all of this: New Hampshire now is Massachusetts. Loeb must be rolling in his grave.

For years, the folks in the Granite State would chortle about how alluring their brand of low-tax living must be to Massachusetts residents. In fact, it seems, it was. From 2000 to 2006, even as Massachusetts's population remained stagnant, New Hampshire grew by 6.4 percent, according to a 2008 report from UNH's Carsey Institute. Most of that population increase was due to migration from other states, and the number one contributor was metropolitan Boston. During that time, New Hampshire had a net gain of 44,000 from this region.

And why the rush to move north? A Globe poll from 2006 found that most who left Massachusetts did so because of our high cost of living. Another 30 percent cited taxes and a good chunk -- more than 10 percent -- named the state's liberal politics and political leadership.

How deliciously ironic. All of those emigres may have thought they had abandoned Massachusetts, but it appears many carried its politics with them. On the streets of Nashua and Manchester, they're now building their own little Bay States. Why are they re-creating the very thing they left behind?

My guess is that while it's easy to complain about state government in general, when it comes to specifics, people like having the government take care of them. Onetime Massachusetts residents are still in thrall to the lures of well-funded schools, decent roads, and readily available healthcare. That's what they were promised by the Democrats in Massachusetts, and that's why they're now voting Democratic in New Hampshire. Is all of this a good thing or bad? Well, we've seen this story before: A Democratic hegemony. The slow death of the Republican Party. How much longer until New Hampshire's own version of the Big Dig?

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, February 15, 2009.

The 'Myth' of the Good Recession

A flat-lining economy doesn't make us better people.

We're so lucky to be in a recession. Frugal living is healthier. Hard times are forcing us to cut back on restaurants and late-night entertainment for the simpler pleasures of home-cooked meals and evenings with friends. Instead of shopping as a way of life, we're learning to appreciate the goods we already have. The recession is helping us rediscover our roots and focus on the things that matter most: our families, friends, and communities. And recessions are green, to boot: less consumption will be less damaging to the environment.

These sentiments can be found everywhere. The recession is "good for the soul" according to some bloggers. It's a "corrective balance to the profligacy of the past decade," says the Globe's own editorial page. Commentators call it a necessary purgative for lives that have become spiritually bankrupt and for a culture marked by mindless consumerism. Unemployment, homelessness, and insecurity may be painful, but ultimately, we're told, they'll make us better people and the world a better place.

Nonsense. Recessions don't make us better people; they make us worse. An economic downturn won't be good for the environment; it will hurt it. If we really want to save the world, strengthen communities and families, and elevate people's souls, the best thing we could do is to get the bulls running again.

To some, the Great Depression has become a time of gauzy nostalgia, misremembered as the good old days when people cared for one another and placed their faith in God and country. Certainly there are heartwarming stories of folks who rose to the challenges of adversity. But anecdotes notwithstanding, it was a miserable time for most. Worldwide, slack economic conditions helped plant the seeds for the discontent that led to World War II. Those same conditions gave rise to fascism and anti-Semitism in the United States. People starved, 1.5 million families broke up as men left to seek work, and more than 200,000 children became vagrants.

So much for the salutary effects of recessions on family life and communities.

Recessions don't make us healthier. Morbidity and mortality figures, for instance, track closely with incomes. The richer you are, the longer you live and the less often you get sick. Recessions don't strengthen neighborhoods. Crime, for one, is far higher in areas where incomes are lower. Nor do recessions help kids. The brains of poor children, according to a University of California study released in December, are fundamentally different, "similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult." And frankly, unless your solution to environmental degradation is to wipe people off the face of the earth, the only way to clean up the planet is to have a strong economy. Whether it's wastewater treatment systems, smokestack scrubbers, or renewable energy, green living requires spending money on research and new technologies. Booming economies can generate such resources; those mired in recession cannot.

One can grant all this, however, and still wonder whether our wealth has somehow caused us to become morally impoverished. I understand the critique, typified by Carrie Bradshaw's Manolo Blahnik obsession. But Sex and the City was television, and TV is not real life. I would dare say the critics damning rampant consumerism would not level the critique at themselves. It's always everyone else they deem crass and shallow, yet I have no idea who those people really are. Up until the market crash, for example, charities were predicting the largest infusion of giving ever from the high-income baby boom generation. That's hardly selfish. Yes, people with extra cash like to buy things, but they also spend more on education and other opportunities for their kids. Again, that's not selfish.

Decades ago, psychologist Abraham Maslow argued there are "hierarchies" of human needs, ranging from the basic (such as food) to the exalted (such as art). It was only when people had comfortably achieved those basics -- when they knew they had housing, safe communities, etc. -- that most could then begin to realize higher needs such as love, self-esteem, and eventually self-actualization. If Maslow is right, recessions could rarely make us better people. During them, we're too preoccupied with simply getting by. It's only during the good times, when economies are humming, that we can ever become fully human.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, February 1, 2009.