Tom Keane

The court was right

The Voting Rights Act was outdated but now Congress needs to act

The Supreme Court in large measure got it right when it struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act. I know; thinking this makes me an awful person. But the underlying facts justifying the law’s toughest and most controversial measures are now almost 40 years old. Some states that were bad actors back then are no longer. Other states have changed and now deserve more scrutiny. And while it was discrimination against black voters that motivated the law in the first place, today’s worry, perhaps even more so, is discrimination against brown. The solution is simple: Congress needs to update the law to reflect today’s realities.

Ah, but there’s the rub. Congress can’t or won’t, runs the conventional wisdom. It’s broken. The Supreme Court should have recognized that and somehow either given a pass to a bad law or re-written it to keep it alive. And indeed, maybe it should have. But it’s a dangerous step, one that too quickly gives up on our ability to govern ourselves and one that too easily hands decision-making over to an unelected body of nine. Dictatorships, even benevolent ones, are scary propositions.

The Voting Rights Act was passed in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, pushed through in large measure by the legislative genius of Lyndon Johnson. One section was uniquely provocative: It subjected some states and a few counties to particularly tough scrutiny — called “preclearance” — if they wanted to make any changes to their voting rules. Even slight measures — moving a voting location, for instance — had to be submitted to federal authorities for approval. Moreover, the onus was on the jurisdiction to prove that the change wouldn’t affect voters on the basis of their race, color, or language. The list of “covered jurisdictions” was first drawn up in 1965. It was modified in 1970 and then again in 1975. Congress extended the law for 25 years in 1982, but didn’t change the list. The same thing happened again in 2006. So by the time the case challenging the law got to the Supreme Court, it had been 38 years since anyone had really thought about who should be precleared or not.

Preclearance is kind of a scarlet letter that proclaims one a bigot. Back in 1975, the nine states named — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia — likely deserved to be shamed. So too did the handful of other areas (ranging from the Bronx to parts of Florida to three counties in California). But are all of those jurisdictions bad today? Probably not, and that, as Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in his majority opinion, is the issue; “the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.”

So why didn’t Congress update the list of covered jurisdictions when it renewed the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and 2006? Because, to be blunt, it didn’t have the political will to do so. Cutting one state or county from the list would have provoked cries from others that they too deserved to be dropped. And adding in new areas would have been equally controversial. No one wanted the scarlet letter.

So, as it often does, Congress punted, renewing the law without revising the list. It was the easiest thing to do. Unfortunately, it was also the wrong thing to do.

“Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions,” Roberts wrote in his decision, and then everything would be all right. Can that be done? Most of the commentary following the decision says no, but I think we give up too easily. Perhaps preclearance should be applied to all 50 states, making everyone equally subject to the scarlet letter. Or perhaps a simple, self-working formula could be developed for who gets preclearance or not. Disparities in voting rates between whites and minorities of, say, 10 percent, would automatically require preclearance for a county. Bring voting rates up, and preclearance would go away.

In a sense, as it does with many other laws that it finds unconstitutional, the Supreme Court handed the issue back to Congress with a simple admonishment: Fix it. And in our republic, it is — and should be — Congress, not the Court, that bears that responsibility.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on June 30, 2013.

This match never lit

Markey, Gomez failed to engage voters in Senate race

IF POLITICS is supposed to be the Bay State’s blood sport, today’s election suggests water now runs in our veins. Or perhaps our blood sport is now just sports — as in the Bruins finals, Red Sox travails, or discussions about who next coaches the Celtics. Either way, Markey versus Gomez has proved a tepid contest.

There are a host of theories why. The Marathon bombings distracted us. Special elections are confusing. The weather has been weird. Politics itself has lost its luster. But most of the blame should go to the candidates themselves. Ed Markey never wanted the race to catch fire. And Gomez didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to light the match anyway.

Markey was a colorless candidate, foisted upon the electorate by the national Democratic Party. In office for 36 years and counting, there was little new and exciting about the guy. He was largely invisible, proffering few innovative ideas and relying on standard Democratic bromides. He told us a lot he would “fight” — for Social Security, Medicare, jobs — a seemingly brave but actually silly promise. A long-termer like Markey knows that, in office, fights in politics rarely yield useful results. He loved the word “progressive” too: “passionate progressive,” “progressive senator,” “progressive solutions,” “progressive leader” (all of this from just the first four paragraphs on his website’s homepage!). None of this was designed to engage us, which was the point of this under-the-radar campaign. A Democrat in a Democratic state can well just coast to victory and, with polls showing Markey considerably ahead, he likely will.

For his part, Gomez had surface appeal but, as the onion was peeled back, there was little else revealed. A political consultant lighting on Gomez’s resume — Navy SEAL, Latino, successful businessman, handsome — would have thought him a dream. But there were nagging problems. During the Republican primary, a contretemps ensued over a letter Gomez had sent to Governor Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the Senate seat and vowing to support President Obama’s agenda on immigration and gun control. That letter called into question his GOP bona fides and, in the general campaign, also seemed to signal a worry: No one was sure what Gomez was about. On top of that, Gomez seemed remarkably unschooled in public policy, perhaps intentionally so. The attacks on Markey’s longevity and Gomez’s argument that “we need citizen legislators, not career politicians” in some measure showed a lack of respect for the complexity and seriousness of the job he was seeking.

The comparisons to Scott Brown were endless. Gabriel Gomez is no Scott Brown, runs the argument, but to be frank, Scott Brown was no Scott Brown either (a point proved last year when Elizabeth Warren handily beat him). The electrifying January 2010 election Brown won was less about trucks and barn jackets than it was about a wave of voter unhappiness with President Obama, Washington gridlock, and impending national health care legislation. Brown caught that wave and rode it to victory.

It’s conceivable that this election could have been about another source of voter discontent — the series of scandals (political manipulation by the IRS, privacy and the NSA, criminal investigations of reporters) that speak to a worrying abuse of government power. But while Gomez adopted some of the outward symbols Brown used to convey his image as an everyman (such as the bomber jacket), he never took the next step of seizing on an issue that would give voters a reason to care. He wanly said he’d be a “new kind of Republican,” presumably code to mean he wouldn’t toe the national GOP line, but he never laid out a coherent philosophy to tell us what, exactly, his new line was.

In retrospect, the right candidate for this election might well have been Dan Winslow, the erudite former judge and state rep who came in last in the GOP primary. Steeped in public policy and creative to boot, Winslow would have been provocative, forcing voters to think and pushing Markey hard enough to take him out of his comfort zone. But that didn’t happen, and so another dull race is over and we’re on to the next: the battle to succeed Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Hope springs eternal.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on June 25, 2013.

Are we overpopulating?

Fiction and doomsayers notwthstanding, maybe not

The premise of Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code’’ was that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, presumably bored of miracles and sermons, married and had kids. His newest novel, “Inferno,’’ is kind of the same except that this time (spoiler alert!) it’s the rest of us having kids — and far, far too many. The shocking solution: Wipe out almost half the human race. Many finished Brown’s earlier book believing descendants of God literally walk among us. So before they treat his latest offering as gospel, so to speak, a word of caution: Brown is flat-out wrong.

Brown draws from the work of political scientist Robert Malthus, who in 1798 warned about the dangers of unchecked human reproduction. The collapse of civilization, he feared, was near at hand. The logic of that view led Malthus to oppose the British poor laws — which gave aid to the destitute — for the reasons most pithily expressed by Ebenezer Scrooge: “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Other have taken up Malthus’s crusade, notably Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,’’ predicted a near cataclysm in the 1970s. Oops. Malthus, Ehrlich, and their followers aren’t wrong on their math, however. The earth’s population has grown, and that growth has been rapid. In 1800 there were just 1 billion. Last year, according to the US Census Bureau, we hit 7 billion.

Population notwithstanding, however, humanity is better off than it ever was. What the doomsayers didn’t anticipate is that human ingenuity would be able to keep pace, and more so. Food production per acre climbed. We found new sources of energy. Modern, free-market economies created wealth where once there was only misery. Indeed, over the last 20 years the global poverty rate has been cut in half, and it is realistic to expect that dire poverty could well be eliminated in the next 20.

Still, at some point you’d think, Malthus and Ehrlich have to be right. The earth may be able to tolerate 7 billion. But double, triple that? There is, after all, only so much room.

Except that the predictions of inexorable population growth are wrong. Our population won’t grow to 21 billion, or even 14 billion. It now looks as if earth will max out at around 10 billion by 2100. And after that, world population might actually fall.

Brown’s fictional hero, Robert Langdon, wanders the hot spots of Europe — Florence, Venice, and Istanbul — observing how crowded those cities are. But that’s because they’re tourist traps. Europe, in fact, is shrinking. The so-called replacement level — the number of children a woman must have to keep population stable — is 2.1 (the fraction accounts for childhood death or infertility). Europe is an amazingly low 1.51 (and Italy, the country that seems especially crowded to Langdon, a mere 1.41). Other developed nations follow suit: Japan is 1.39, Canada 1.59, Australia 1.77. The United States is somewhat of an outlier, at 2.06 (in large part because, as former Florida governor Jeb Bush recently and clumsily put it, new immigrants are “more fertile”). Still, we’re lower than the replacement rate.

Yes, poorer parts of the world continue to have high growth. Sub-Sahara Africa is 4.66, for instance, but demographers see that declining to 2.1 by 2070. In fact, by 2027 the entire world will likely fall below the replacement rate.

And why? Population experts call it the “demographic transition.” As countries develop — as they modernize, grow their economies, improve health care, decrease mortality, and educate more of their population (especially girls) — a remarkable thing happens: birthrates fall. The effect of education is particularly profound. Educated girls grow to be women who have more choices in life than merely being pregnant. Educated girls are as well a proxy for how societies are evolving in terms of their economies, their attitudes toward their citizens, and their regard for women’s rights.

One of the principal characters in Brown’s book initially dedicates her life toward social work but, seeing the teeming slums of Manila, she despairs, turning instead toward a manufactured plague as the solution. She should have stuck it out. The Three Rs, it turns out, are more powerful than any germ.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on June 23, 2013.

Privacy in a surveillance society

The devices we use — our televisions, smartphones, computers, even cars — give us vast amounts of information. Increasingly, however, it’s a two-way street: They’re watching us even as we’re watching them. We need an off switch, an idea US Representative Michael Capuano proposes to make into law.

Progressive Insurance — home of cheery, oddly coiffed Flo — offers reduced rates to drivers who install monitors in their cars. The program, called Snapshot, records the hours you drive, the miles traveled, and how hard you brake. Right now it’s voluntary and lasts only 30 days, but already the implications are clear. Those who refuse to let the company track their driving pay more. And it’s not a far step to round-the-clock monitoring and adding in features such as GPS. Drive in “bad” neighborhoods? No discounts for you!

Xfinity, the nifty new name for plain old Comcast, touts its home security system, featuring an advertisement with Mom sitting in her office watching as the kids come in through the front door. As they do, one glances toward the camera, an odd look on her face. We’re supposed to think all is well, but the look may say something else altogether. Perhaps the other kid with her is not a sibling, but a possible lover. Maybe she’s just a little creeped out that Mom is seeing her every move, wondering where else in the house the cameras are installed. And perhaps that isn’t really Mom who’s watching at all.

And then there’s the TV that sees you, the idea that provoked Capuano’s ire. There used to be an old joke about a fool sitting at home watching a game show, eagerly raising his hand to answer questions. It’s a joke no more. Televisions soon will be equipped with front-facing cameras that observe the viewer even as the viewer observes the show. That feature could open up some neat new worlds of entertainment — truly interactive game shows, for instance. But it’s also scary stuff. Imagine a snuggling couple suddenly confronted with an ad for condoms, for instance.

In fact, two-way communication is already here. Anyone who has ever taken an online course knows that teachers see you even as you see them lecture. Close your eyes or stop paying attention and you’ll get a reprimand. Soon, no human involvement will be needed. The new Galaxy S4 smartphone, for instance, tracks your eyes. Look away and the video pauses. Look back, and it restarts. Cool, yes, but potentially, as Capuano says, “an incredible invasion of privacy.”

Capuano is hardly a Luddite calling for banning the new technologies. But he does argue for transparency and the right to refuse to be watched. His proposal, co-sponsored with Walter Jones of North Carolina, would require the television to display the words “We are watching you,” if information is being sent from the home to the carrier — or to anyone else, for that matter. (Jones, by the way, is a conservative Republican, proving that bipartisanship in politics still exists.) It also would add in a kill switch and, critically, would prevent retaliation against consumers who don’t want to be observed.

I suspect that, as Capuano and Jones explore the issue further, they’ll find this idea can apply to a lot more than just TVs. We are becoming a surveillance society: insurers watching drivers, parents watching kids, advertisers watching customers. There has to be a stopping point, particularly because the information that is shared with one can easily be shared with all. “Think about what you do in the privacy of your own home, and then think about how you would feel sharing that information with your cable company, their advertisers, and your government,” says Capuano. The answer, as Nancy Reagan once put it in a different context, is, “Just say no.”

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on June 18, 2013.

Term limits disregard experience

Should Gabriel Gomez win the June 25 Senate contest, I hope he reneges on his vow to limit his term in office. Term limits may make for good campaign fodder, feeding into voter anger about “career politicians” captured by the dreaded D.C. Beltway, but they make for bad public policy. Massachusetts has a reputation for having an outsized impact on national politics. A Bay State senator planning to walk away from the job in a few years would undercut that, hurting his constituents and hurting the Commonwealth.

Granted, Gomez is having some fun. At their first debate, the Republican called Representative Ed Markey a “poster boy for term limits,” a line that’s gotten some traction — and one can understand why. First elected in 1976 at the tender age of 30, Markey, now 66, has spent 36-plus years in Congress — almost an entire lifetime of employment. That pales compared with, say, Michigan Representative John Dingell (57 years and counting), but it’s still good enough to make Markey the second-longest-serving member of Congress from New England. (Vermont’s Senator Patrick Leahy has him beat by a year.)

But there’s a logical flaw to Gomez’s rhetoric. Markey, of course, isn’t seeking another term as a US representative. He wants a new gig — senator — and should he win he’ll start off as a freshman (albeit, a well-known freshman). Term limits proposals don’t usually try to prevent someone from running for a new position. So Gomez’s argument really is less about public policy than it is about trying to persuade voters that enough is enough. It’s a fair point, but not the kind of thing to be enshrined in law.

But suppose it was law — or suppose Gomez as a senator took it upon himself to voluntarily limit his own term?

If the latter, then he’d be like a fighter entering the ring with one hand tied behind his back. Gomez’s position is grounded in an almost naïve belief that all votes in the Senate are equal. That’s technically true, but also largely irrelevant. The real stuff of legislating occurs in committees, such as Appropriations, Judiciary, or Foreign Relations. All proposed legislation first goes to a committee. The committee decides what to consider and what to put on a back burner. Committees tightly control the few measures that go forward: holding hearings, making amendments and, should the bill be reported out for a full vote, managing the process on the floor.

And of course, when we talk about committees, we’re really talking about those who run committees: high-ranking members and, most importantly, committee chairs. And those lofty positions almost always go to those who have been around the longest and proven their legislative mettle. Power, in other words, is connected to seniority.

A Senator Gomez, should he choose not to run after two terms, would be walking away just as he’s getting into a position to really do some good.

Or perhaps what Gomez means is that he’d favor term limits for all, not just himself. If so, we’d nevertheless have the odd sight of senators compelled to leave just as they’ve finally gained influence. But far, far worse, what we’d end up with is a body of amateurs, easy prey for bureaucrats, lobbyists, and advocates — none of whom have term limits.

We’d also have a Congress of incompetents (and cheap gibes notwithstanding, that’s not the case today). There’s a myth about politics that it’s easy, that experience and knowledge don’t count. Untrue. Legislating requires the same kind of smarts and relationships that matter in any other line of work. No business in America would go about firing its most skilled employees merely because they’ve been around too long. Nor should voters.

That doesn’t mean that long-serving politicians should automatically be reelected. Other factors matter: ideas, enthusiasm, engagement, empathy, and so. Still, as former Speaker Tip O’Neill observed in 1991, “This country faces a lot of storms. And . . . when we’re in a storm you’d rather be under a good, old-fashioned, strong, worthy oak than some sapling of a tree that blows with the wind.”

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on June 16, 2013.

Saving democracy

Edward Snowden is an American hero

We’re going to be learning a lot more about Edward Snowden over the next few days, and he and his actions will be mightily debated. Traitor or patriot? Benedict Arnold or Daniel Ellsberg? In the end, I think, he’ll be thought an American hero.

Snowden is the 29-year-old analyst who last week unveiled the existence of a surveillance program — code-named PRISM — run by the National Security Agency, the nation’s top-secret spy shop. PRISM allegedly has the ability to comb through almost every digital or electronic communication we make, whether it be by telephone, e-mail, Skype, Twitter, or other social media. It’s the kind of stuff featured in novels, movies, and TV, but stuff that we knew — of course — was just fiction. The ravings of paranoiacs and conspiracists aside, our government really wouldn’t do that — nor, we thought, could it.

But, from the documents so far released, we now know it can. And from there to actually snooping into the lives of Americans is a very small step, one that may already have been taken. President Obama, responding to questions about PRISM, said that the war on terror requires “trade-offs” on our liberties. And having just learned about the IRS’s politically motivated harassment of conservative groups, it’s not hard to believe that those “trade-offs” might be extensive. Snowden certainly thinks so. “What they’re doing poses an existential threat to democracy,” he says.

Even before Snowden came forward — voluntarily, it should be noted — the White House was already promising an aggressive investigation and prosecution. Members of Congress are split. Republican Peter King, who heads up the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, called for Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong, where he is now holed up. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is angry as well, urging prosecution. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is going the opposite direction, threatening to file a lawsuit to block the NSA’s surveillance.

Americans, I expect, will be divided on the issue as well. Those who prefer security will support the NSA’s efforts. Those fearful of government overreach will not.

But no matter which side of the equation you’re on, Snowden’s actions are justified, and for a quite different reason. The real problem with the NSA program may not be what it was doing, but that none of us knew. Secrecy is the death of democracy. Without information, without knowing, there can be no opportunity for debate, no oversight by the people.

Indeed, the whole structure of surveillance that we have built up since 9/11 has a Kafkaesque quality to it. There are secret courts that issue secret opinions that no one is allowed to read. When spies demand information from companies like Verizon or Google, those executives aren’t permitted even to acknowledge what information they have handed over. Even members of Congress are held to bizarre standards of secrecy, which is why for some time we’ve had vague warnings from Democratic Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden (both members of the Intelligence Committee) that something was amiss, but, until Snowden’s exposé, no ability on their part to say exactly what.

This is no way for a democracy to function. Obama says, “I think we’ve struck the right balance” between privacy and security, but that, so far, that claim has been impossible to assess. Certainly Udall and Wyden disagree, and the rest of us, if we had known, might well have disagreed too. But since we didn’t know, we couldn’t.

Unlike Benedict Arnold, who actually defected to the British, Snowden wasn’t trying to help another government or terrorist group. He was, rather, more like Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who, with the help of his colleague Anthony Russo (as well as the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s office), released the Pentagon Papers. Those documents revealed that US officials had been systematically misleading the public about the Vietnam War. The logic then was the same as it is now: If the people aren’t told the truth, then they are no longer the ones running their government. Ellsberg today says Snowden has shown “the kind of courage that we expect of people on the battlefield.” Indeed. We owe him our gratitude — and perhaps even our democracy.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on June 11, 2013.

Marketing bully

Abercrombie & Fitch’s exclusionary tactics may be backfiring

Abercrombie & Fitch loves to court controversy; edginess gives appeal. Accused of hyper-sexualizing fashion, it has gotten the attention of teens who see the company’s occasional advocacy of, say, group sex as another form of rebellion. But sex isn’t A&F’s real problem. Rather, it’s become something of a schoolyard bully. The company loudly trumpets its commitment to diversity — of race, religion, and sexual orientation — but there’s one type of diversity you won’t see: If you’re bigger or overweight or just not hip enough, Abercrombie is not for you. The company doesn’t want you in its stores. Indeed, it won’t even make you clothes that fit.

Women in particular feel the brunt of A&F’s wrath. It doesn’t carry XL sizes for them, and pants max out at a size 10. (To add fuel to this particular fire, XXL sizes are readily available for guys.) This is hardly unintentional. “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids . . . Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” Those are the words of the company’s CEO, Michael Jeffries, in an interview from seven years ago. That quote, recently rediscovered, has over the last few weeks provoked a firestorm of controversy in social media. After some delay, Jeffries finally issued an apology, but it was one of those acts of contrition we hear too often from those who are just trying to do some damage control: “We sincerely regret and apologize for any offense caused,” read a press release. In other words, we’re not sorry for what we said; we’re just sorry it got us in trouble.

A&F’s marketing strategy indulges in and legitimizes that worst of adolescent rites, the creation of cliques and through them, inevitably, decisions about whom to exclude. After shocking incidents such as the 2010 suicide of South Hadley’s Phoebe Prince, parents and schools mounted efforts to stop bullying and to get kids to think about the consequences of hurtful words and actions. Abercrombie pushes hard in the opposite direction.

Further complicating things is who A&F defines as being in and out, and it all relates to size and shape. The fashion industry has been under fire lately for creating unrealistic conceptions of body shape and A&F seems a prime example. Size 10 may be the company’s largest, but size 14 is the average for an American woman, meaning that, at best, A&F leaves most girls and women feeling badly about themselves and, at worst, feeds into the rising epidemic of eating disorders that affects adolescent girls in particular.

To a degree, A&F and Jeffries’s attitudes are so over-the-top as to seem absurd, easy pickings for outrage. Other clothing retailers catering to the young and hip — H&M, Forever 21, American Eagle — have sizing charts that go to 18 or greater. And their CEOs don’t go about uttering fatuous pronouncements about whom they’re willing to allow in their stores.

Indeed, A&F is so extreme that it may appear an easy-to-dismiss outlier. It’s not, though. “The fact that Abercrombie is so clear about their goal actually forces us to consider the many subtle messages that kids get about how they are not good or skinny enough,” says Stuart Koman, who heads up Walden Behavioral Care in Waltham, a treatment center for those with anorexia, bulimia, and the like.

Which is why the current spate of controversy is such a good thing. The reaction to A&F is getting kids — all of us, in fact — to think hard about the pressures under which we put girls. Even better, the company seems to be suffering the consequences. Its sales are dropping, its stock price is now under $50 (well below 2011 highs of $77), and there are rumors that Jeffries may be let go when his contract expires in 2014.

Some of this may just be the vagaries of a fickle market, but some also seems connected to a growing discontent with A&F and the philosophies it espouses. Abercrombie may have made one critical miscalculation. In trying to define what is cool or not, it may have missed out that for many of today’s teens, one thing that is not cool is making fun of others.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on June 9, 2013.

First Senate debate: All about expectations

A snippy opening, then things got serious

So far, the Massachusetts senatorial campaign has been a snippy affair, the two candidates — longtime congressman Ed Markey and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez — taking potshots at each other on any manner of personal topics. And thus the opening question, from Globe political editor Cynthia Needham, was about each other’s character. Gomez, up first, turned to Markey, smiled, and said, “After 37 years in D.C., welcome back to Boston.”

To his credit, Markey held his tongue. And from there the debate suddenly veered serious, delving into the tough topics of the day: gun control, national health care, middle-class struggles, war-making, Washington scandals, immigration reform, and abortion.

Moderator Jon Keller has developed a near-master’s touch of keeping the conversation moving. He permitted a 90-second response to each newly posed topic, and then forced a series of ever-shorter rebuttals. If the candidates were actually adding something rather than merely repeating themselves, he would let them go on. Otherwise, off to a new topic.

A first debate between candidates is all about expectations. The worry about Markey has been that he’s a weary old pol, running his campaign on autopilot. The man who showed up, however, looked good and seemed engaged, refusing to sit back and absorb Gomez’s punches.

For his part, the neophyte candidate — portrayed as more image than substance — mostly seemed to know what he was talking about. Granted, there was one mystifying series of exchanges about whether Markey had ever authored successful legislation over the last 20 years. Gomez would say he hadn’t, and on each rebuttal Markey would tick off a new list of those he had. Bad move: It just gave Markey an opportunity to blow his own horn. Still, on other matters — such as the fears businesspeople have about the impending costs of Obamacare — Gomez seemed far more in touch with on-the-ground worries.

This was also a time for each man to size up the other. One expects Gomez will have a better answer next time around on Roe v. Wade and picking Supreme Court justices. One expects as well that Markey will do better when he talks about the scandals currently embroiling the Capital. He sounded far too defensive about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, come to think of it, never answered the question posed to him: Should Attorney General Eric Holder be fired?

Meaning, I think, there’s a lot more to come in debate number two.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on June 6, 2013.

The BRA must stay

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is a bogeyman to many, a seemingly all-powerful agency that, depending on its position on any particular issue, can be the bane of everyone from neighborhood activists to developers to good-government types. It has its roots in a very different Boston — the dilapidated city that gave rise to the phenomenon of urban renewal — and can feel curiously dated today. “The BRA must go,” argues a piece in the current issue of Boston Magazine, pressing those running for mayor to get rid of the agency altogether.

That may or may not make a good campaign issue (I’m not persuaded debates over bureaucratic restructuring engage many voters), but a word of advice to those who would hold the office: Some reforms might be merited, but ceding away the mayor’s power to control development would not only make a hash of your term, but might prove deeply hurtful to the city itself.

Granted, “redevelopment” is an anachronistic word and the failure to include “planning” in the BRA’s name sends the wrong signal. So one easy reform is a title change: the Planning and Development Authority, perhaps. Another reform worth considering relates to the agency’s funding. Right now, the authority both promotes and approves development, supporting itself from the revenues generated. That looks to be a conflict; some fear the BRA’s interest in enriching its own coffers takes precedence over smart planning. Examples of that occurring are hard to find but still, in the world of politics, perception is critical.

The BRA was created by the Legislature in 1957 to try to spur development in a city that, like other cities across America, was dying. It spearheaded the razing of the West End, the creation of Government Center, and the development of the Prudential Center. Those projects did help revive Boston, but at a cost of unwarranted demolition, ugliness, and social upheaval. The blame for that lies more with the times than the BRA, however. Back then the conventional wisdom of planners and urban theorists boiled down to a belief that cities must be destroyed in order to be saved. Virtually no one subscribes to that view today.

The times may have changed but the BRA still has power, albeit with a bit of a wink and a nod. It is ostensibly independent of the city government, with its own board and a director, but in practice it reports to the mayor. That allows it to play two roles. Almost any development activity itself generates pushback. Change is hard, and resistance is strong, and the easiest thing for a politician to do is to cave to opponents. The BRA — under its guise of independence — provides cover to those who know development must occur but would prefer to avoid the political heat. On the other hand, if opposition is too strong, or if it appears that the direction of the authority is off kilter, it’s relatively easy to get a decision reversed. Menino’s done that many times, and the next mayor will undoubtedly have the same opportunities.

And if there were no BRA? Development would fragment and stall. NIMBYism would rule the city as opponents would find it ever easier to block things they didn’t like. Absent a strong authority able to play developers off each other, projects would be piecemeal, disconnected from each other, and less in tune with the fabric of the neighborhoods in which they were located. Then too, with power dispersed, developers would reach out to influence local politicians and power brokers, trading favors and cutting deals for their approvals. At the same time, we’d probably get lots of pie-in-the-sky planning exercises, the kinds that sketch out wonderful alternatives that never materialize because the most important players — those who would actually pay for and build the projects — were not at the table.

Of course, for those who would like to see things remain as they are, all of this would be fine. Indeed, there’s a term of art for their position. It’s called the “1950s.” That was the era of infighting, stagnation, and degeneration that created the conditions that gave us urban renewal in the first place. It’s not an era to which Boston should return.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on June 4, 2013.

Was ‘pond scum’ the best Gomez could do?

Gabriel Gomez recently called Ed Markey “pond scum,” a remark that enlivened an otherwise torpid Senate race but also provoked much tsk-tsk’ing from these who wish their politics more genteel. Oh, please. It’s not as if Gomez was the first to ever crudely tear into an opponent. Just before the election last year, Barack Obama used a barnyard epithet to call Mitt Romney a liar. And remember when former Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to attempt something that most medical professionals would describe as impossible?”

It’s not the insults I mind. What I mind is their lack of imagination. Pond scum? Really, Gabe — is that the best you could do?

Gomez was upset about a Markey ad that appeared to compare him to Osama bin Laden. But a far better comeback would have been to wonder whether Markey “has abandoned good principles, or whether he ever had any.” Perhaps he could have said that Markey “is not possessed of the backbone of an angleworm” or that “he couldn’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

Now those are insults — closer to poetry than prose, witty and to the point. I wish I could claim credit for them but, unfortunately, they’re all lifted from others. The first was Thomas Paine trashing George Washington (yes, not even the father of our country was immune from scorn). The second was Ulysses S. Grant upbraiding James Garfield, and the last was Countess Margot Asquith’s take on British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. And they all illustrate two things. First, folks back then were a lot cleverer. And second, it’s all been said before.

Over 150 years ago, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli denounced Irish agitator Daniel O’Connell, saying, “He has committed every crime that does not require courage.” Of another political opponent, Disraeli said, “He only had one idea and that was wrong.” In 1961 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan uttered words that resonate today: “As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.”

Good lines all.

Americans aren’t above the fray either. Theodore Roosevelt supposedly said William McKinley “has a chocolate éclair backbone.” Here was one political opponent’s take on Dwight Eisenhower: “As an intellectual, he bestowed upon the games of golf and bridge all the enthusiasm and perseverance that he withheld from books and ideas.” And Adlai Stevenson, better known for his wit than his wins, in 1956 described Richard Nixon as, “the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation.” Harry Truman was also not a Nixon fan: “He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.”

Even some of our most revered political heroes loved to dish dirt. Abraham Lincoln beat up on his debating partner, Stephen Douglas, saying, “His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.” Lincoln himself was also frequently the target of abuse. Harper’s Magazine, for example, serenaded him with a stream of invective: “Filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”

Of course, sometimes the put-downs can backfire. “We did not conceive it possible that (someone) would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile . . . in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.” That was the Chicago Times in its review of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. Oops. And more recently, US Representative Jack Kemp of New York trashed a colleague, saying, “When his library burned down, it destroyed both books. (He) hadn’t finished coloring in the second.” The target of his venom was Senator Bob Dole. A few years later, in 1996, Dole asked Kemp to be his running mate. That must have been an odd conversation.

The point is that politics and insults are intertwined. A good line gets notice; it may even make a career. In going after Markey, Gomez was just following in a long, hallowed tradition. He just did a bad job of it.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on June 2, 2013.