A PLACE CALLED HOPE -- by Steve Nadis
After Deval Patrick won last Tuesday's primary, I felt, for the first time in a long while, the stirrings of something special--finally some excitement about a new face on the political scene, akin to the feeling I had when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. So far, Patrick seems to offer everything you'd want in a politician: He's smart, thoughtful, charismatic, and nondoctrinaire. I think he'll be able to dispose of his Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, with little difficulty (a contest that a Globe columnist characterized as one of "hope vs. tax cuts"). Healy is offering the standard Republican formula, trying to cast Patrick as a “tax-and-spend” liberal, and I expect that by now that stratagem has worn thin. Healy also suffers from the taint of Romney--a governor whose slogan appears to be “Anywhere But Massachusetts.” Assuming Patrick does prevail over our Lieutenant Governor, he’ll then face an even bigger challenge, attempting to do what his former boss Clinton did not--measuring up to his great promise.
