Death of the Dapper, and More

If you don’t live in Boston, today’s death of Albert “Dapper” O’Neil at 87 means nothing to you. I’ll address more on Dapper himself in a moment, but no matter where you live there is a Dapper O’Neil in your city or town.

Your version of Dapper is someone who has been involved with city or town politics his or her entire life. They are correctly labeled as “old school” and often espouse personal and political views that may have been fashionable when your parents or grandparents were young, yet are now hopelessly outdated. While time and politics have evolved, your Dapper O’Neil continues to act as if nothing has changed and is often excoriated for his or her beliefs, and is often labeled a nuisance at best or a roadblock to progress (to be polite) at worst. Yet despite their firebrand and polarizing personalities, your Dapper O’Neil has legions of devoted fans and constituents. These people see your Dapper O’Neil as a throwback to what they consider the golden days and are fiercely loyal, knowing that without their beloved representative (who is often everyone else’s headache) there would be no bastion of decency or contact in City Hall, the town meeting or even Capitol Hill.

Dapper O’Neil, whose obituary is here, served on the Boston City Council from 1971 to 1999. Nobody typified the old Irish Catholic Boston political stereotype better. On one hand if you approached O’Neil for help with a problem, or you happened to be a blue collar Caucasian, you had a friend for life. If you were anybody else, God help you. There was no bigger foe of school integration or gays marching in Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. If you thought hippies, liberals and abortion were ruining America, Dapper was your man. If you hated political correctness and didn’t think it was inappropriate to say “Nice gams!” to a woman as she walked by, Dapper would like you. Think of Archie Bunker as a city councilor, and you’ve got Dapper in a nutshell.

And yet, despite all this, Dapper also had a heart. He openly acknowledged he could not and would not change with the times. Here is Kevin Cullen’s tribute, which also mentions the Archie Bunker angle. It seems that everyone has two memories of Dapper, and they tend to be one of him screaming at blacks during the busing riots of the 1970s and the other one of his admiration of fellow city councilor David Scondras, who happened to be openly gay.

Dapper’s hero was legendary Boston Mayor James Curley, another Irish Catholic who served time as mayor and in jail (including part of one mayoral stint in jail). Like other legendary Boston politicians – including Billy Bulger, Ray Flynn and Kevin White – he was Catholic first and was extremely socially conservative. And as the 90s went on, Dapper was seen more as an anachronism and throwback. When he finally lost his election in 1999, it was seen as a sign of progress and moving the deadwood out of City Hall. You could hear liberals and immigrants alike sigh with relief.

Dapper’s death, of course, has set off well-intentioned tributes and some additional longing for the good old days when councilors knew all their constituents by name. It’s easy to remember Dapper’s faults. For every chuckle (O’Neil once rented a truck in the early 1970s and threw soap at hippies) there’s a worse embarrassment (the crack about Vietnamese immigrants in Dorchester was disgraceful). But then you also read Cullen’s story about O’Neil helping a Haitian immigrant navigate through Boston zoning laws, and you start changing your mind. You also get the feeling by now that if you had asked City Hall to fill the pothole on your street for a month with no avail, you could get fed up and call Dapper. And you know that Dapper would not only have the crews out there in an hour, but he would also show up, apologize profusely to you and then scream at the crew for your amusement the entire time.

So the reality about these old school politicians, especially as the tributes pile up, is a bit more complicated. Consider the Dapper in your neighborhood. You probably wish he or she would just go away. But if they did, what would happen to the interests of the middle class town residents they champion? And who would you call to get your street plowed or pothole filled?

More Info: How Dapper Got Out the (Female) Vote

Comments on Howie Carr's Tribute: Far better than the tribute itself

GOP Desperation

Frank Luntz said the Democrats were in trouble when they became known as the angry party. They were way too serious, ran dour campaigns on gloom and doom platforms, and just never, ever smiled. The media still doesn’t get that likeability is a huge issue in any election – people won’t vote for someone they don’t like or who talks down to them, and that probably explains why Huckabee is starting to make inroads. He’s the only Republican candidate that seems like a legitimately nice guy.

But how times have changed! The GOP is now the party of hate. They hate immigrants. They hate homosexuals. They hate Mormons. They hate the poor. They hate the environment. In short, they seem to hate everyone who thinks differently from them. The one thing they all seem to like is war, whether it’s in Iraq or against Iran or elsewhere. No wonder the GOP electorate is undecided and the leading candidates are having trouble breaking away from the pact.

I’m not a Republican but watching this has been like watching a has-been athlete trying to make an ill-advised comeback. For years the GOP has been so good on messaging and communicating with voters. When you can get George W. Bush elected president twice and a Republican Congress in power for 12 years, you don’t have a superior product as much as you have good messaging. And it’s amazing how fast it has all come to an end.

I never thought I would see Rudy Giuliani, a man who I greatly respected and admired this time last year shaking hands with Pat Robertson, a virulent demagogue who said America deserved what it got on 9/11 because of its support of homosexuality and abortion. I knew three people who were murdered that day, and for Giuliani to shake hands with someone like that destroyed any credibility he once had with me. It doesn’t matter if he did it to pander to evangelicals who have assumed control of the GOP base. Anyone with integrity who lived through that day like Giuliani did would never stoop so low. That was beyond the realm of decency and a deal breaker for me.

And did you catch Mitt Romney’s appearance on Today this morning? While I watched it, all I could think of was the following: Romney ran Bain Capital for years. Then he ran for Senate in 1994, guided the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, successfully ran for governor in Massachusetts in 2002 and stayed for one term. Not once in that entire time was his religion a problem. Nobody brought it up his entire tenure – not one Democratic opponent. But once he moved onto the larger GOP stage it suddenly became an issue, and he is increasingly forced to defend his religious beliefs right here in America. He’s not being attacked on his politics or the issues. And yesterday a poll reported that 33% of Republican voters said most people would not vote for a Mormon candidate. What do you think that figure would be among Democratic or Independent voters?

Karl Rove originally tapped evangelical Christians because they would deliver a solid voting block. But somehow over the last two years the nonstop spending, a mismanaged war and an unpopular president have erased the GOP’s traditional voting base. A new batch of candidates all trying to out-hate the others and run on a gloom and doom platform isn’t driving in new voters or doing Frank Luntz any favors. And the new base now appears to be rejecting one of its leading candidates on religious grounds and making another sell his soul in a shameless display of pandering that independent voters will see right through. The GOP had a nice run, but it has now reaped what it has sown.