This race is all about Weld. Kerry is the default position, the known quantity: a solid, decent public servant, reliably liberal in a liberal state (though smart enough to move with the tides–especially when it came to reminding Bill Clinton that crime was a very big issue; the crime bill was Kerry’s as much as anyone’s). Weld has been governor for six years, but is not easily apprehended–truly, one of the more exotic specimens in the American aviary. He is a conservative, to be sure. He was brutal, almost merciless, in slashing the state’s budget after he inherited a Dukakisian deficit nightmare in 1990. He eliminated general relief (welfare for people without dependent children), and five of the 11 state bureaucracies. He has cut taxes 15 times–mostly business taxes, Kerry argues, but no matter: the state is booming again. What distinguishes Weld from all those other welfare-slashing, tax-cutting Republican governors, though, is a stubborn libertarian streak. He is pro-choice and pro-gay rights. His chief of staff is homosexual, as is his finance commissioner (indeed, they live together). ““He is entirely self-contained,’’ says a former aide. ““He ignored the liberal establishment when he cut the budget, and he doesn’t give a damn about Republican orthodoxy on social issues. He’s a piece of work.''
Eccentricity is an advantage in Massachusetts, especially if it is well lubricated. Weld is an intellectual; his wife is an intellectual too (a Sinologist, and a Roosevelt). He is also intermittently rowdy, given to high-stakes poker and the ingestion of ““amber-colored liquids,’’ to use his own euphemism. He has wonderful taste in music, can cite relevant passages from Randy Newman to the Violent Femmes (and considered lowering the state flag when Jerry Garcia died). He has flaming red hair and skin to match, an ironic twinkle–the world’s largest leprechaun, it sometimes seems. He jumped into the Charles River to celebrate the passage of an environmental bill this summer. The locals loved it, love him. For a moment, it seemed he might run away with this Senate race. But he hasn’t.
For good reason: his has been a cynical, almost entirely negative campaign. He has three issues, ““taxes, crime and welfare.’’ He talks of nothing else. The first is fair enough–the governor likes the Dole tax cut; the senator doesn’t. But Weld’s gone a bit cheesy, pounding Kerry for supporting Clinton’s utterly equitable 1993 tax on Social Security benefits: why should a senior citizen with an income of $32,000 be taxed any less than an assembly-line worker who makes the same amount? Weld’s other two issues, crime and welfare, are relevant only in retrospect: the governor can claim toughness on both. Crime is a mostly local issue. The Feds can provide money for cops and prisons, but that’s been done and Kerry voted for it. Welfare reform has been done, too. Again, Kerry voted for it–an election-year conversion, perhaps–but what more would Weld do if he won?
What, indeed, would Weld do about anything if he won? He proposes nothing, beyond the vague notion that he’ll work the same magic down in Washington that he has in Boston. He might well, if elected president. As senator, though, his creative iconoclasm will have limits. He even jokes about that. ““I’m bemused to see so many senators leaving Washington because they’re depressed by the pettiness of politics,’’ he says. ““I’m delighted by the pettiness of politics.’’ There is a growing suspicion that Weld is in this race simply for the sport of it. He is an avid duck hunter, a trout fisherman–a sportsman. And that sporting sense tracks neatly with the Boston Irish love of the art of campaigning, cleverly done.
By contrast, John Kerry is not a clever sort. He is a rich man–even more so now, having married Teresa Heinz of the 57 Varieties–and can seem aloof. No one would ever mistake him for a pragmatic, pork-ladling Senator Pothole, which can be a major disadvantage if you’re running against an incumbent governor who routinely travels the state dispensing goodies (amazing how even hardball libertarian governors do that). But Kerry’s dour Brahmin seriousness does have its advantages; it has a strong tradition in this state. He is happy, almost relieved, to talk issues. He has a firmer grasp than Weld on the intricacies of foreign and defense policy; he volunteers his enthusiasm for recent bipartisan efforts to deal with urban poverty by subsidizing private charities. ““Of course, you can’t talk about that stuff much in a campaign,’’ he says, and so he has endeavored to paint Bill Weld as Newt Gingrich’s twin brother, although not quite so harshly as Weld is painting him. Kerry was seen as the more positive candidate in a post-debate Boston Herald poll. Anyplace else, that might be an advantage. In Massachusetts, where they still love rogues and politics, who knows?
