Good Mittance
A series of inexplicable events and the Red Line brought me to outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's walk from the (Massachusetts) State House to Boston Common last night.The center doors of the State House are opened for three occasions: state funerals, visits of Presidents or foreign heads of state, and this ceremonial walk, in which the outgoing Governor strides into Boston Common to become one of the common people again (only one person, James Michael Curley, has ever flouted this tradition; In 1937 he was picked up by a waiting limo at the foot of the State House steps because he would never be a commoner).
I have always wanted to see this ceremony so I managed to get a media pass. State Troopers and hangers-on bustled in and out of the center doors for hours before Romney and his wife emerged. Romney, who yesterday filed exploratory papers for a potential run at the Republican nomination for the Presidency, was, according to the Boston Globe, out of town for 212 of the past 365 days of his Governorship.
More a son of Utah and Michigan than Massachusetts, Romney was seen as a carpetbagger and his filing of papers yesterday came as no surprise.
He shook my hand at the bottom of the stairs. I had no premonitions like Christopher Walken did of Martin Sheen in The Dead Zone, but I was reminded of the following line:
"And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces."
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by Marty Barrett at Wednesday, January 03, 2007
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