A Q&A with political reporter and author Jon Keller

A Q&A with WBZ-TV and radio political reporter and now, author, Jon Keller about "The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster."

Q: What made you to decide to write the book? You talk a lot about the 2006 elections. Was it a reaction to that election or was it an accumulation of ideas, over the years?

A: That probably would have made a better story but that's not what happened. Two things happened: The first is that I'm plenty busy and hadn't really thought much about writing a book. I was approached by a young agent, Eve Bridburg, from Zachary Shuster Harmworth. She also is the founder of the Grub Street literary collective of Boston. She had read an article I had written in Boston Magazine about how Massachusetts is viewed and, more specifically, how Massachusetts is laughed at and ridiculed around the country and around the world. I delved into the reasons why, how we once were this beacon and now we are sort of a laughing stock … the Big Dig, 9-11, various other reasons. She thought there was potential for a book in there.

Once I met with her, it sort of coincided with me turning 50 … it's a wicked cliché but it turns out to be true: When you reach mid-life like that, you start to take stock a little bit. In my case, as I talk about in the book, I was reflecting back to when I was a teenager growing up in Cambridge, the son of these Democratic activist parents, and what I sort of expected my generation would accomplish when we took over. Thinking back on a million conversations with friends and I've always very focused on politics and interested in it.

In the process of this reflection and pulling together my thoughts and a lot of the work I had done over the years and thinking of Massachusetts … you could make the case for being the best opportunity for this liberal/boomer vision to be implemented … the one laboratory where we've kind of had control, with some exceptions. The more I thought about it the more upset I became and the more depressed about where we are, after all these years. And that really broke the dam and everything flowed from that.

Q: I think you have done a good job of analyzing and exposing some of the problems in Massachusetts and the role your generation has had on creating these problems. But, I think if you sat down with some boomers and pointed out the problems, they would totally deny that there are problems.

A: You've just characterized the reaction to the book. Some boomers like it. [But] for the most part, the most harsh resistance and vitriolic criticism that I've had to deal with have come from baby boomers. Younger readers, so far, love it, because everyone [blames] the baby boomers, for a variety of reasons for being, you know, arrogant and shoving our perceived wisdom down everybody's throat. But look at the discontent with the political leadership that we're providing.

I talk in the introduction about the litany of presidential level, national level baby boomer leadership so far: Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, better now as an advocate; not so good as a candidate. Bill Clinton … I have more positive feelings about him but clearly a mixed record there … and on and on it goes. Look at the crop now that are running.

We haven't done well and it is never easy to look in the mirror - particularly when you're getting older, like this generation is - and say, Wow, there's a lot of gray there and I don't look so good. Particularly, for a generation that has been told since the crib how wonderful we are and how we're going to transform the world and we're the best and the brightest and the smartest.

[David] Halberstam wrote a book, "The Best and the Brightest," and it was not about baby boomers. It was about [Robert] McNamara, [William] Bundy, [Dean] Rusk, all those guys [the architects of the Viet Nam Conflict] from an earlier generation … [crosstalk about the generation that stopped the Viet Nam Conflict being responsible for current conflicts] and yet, here we are in Iraq … same old, same old, without much of a compelling counter argument from the left. Give me the left of the red diaper era or the ILGWU. Give me the old American left over the boomer left … ick, what a bunch of whiny losers. So, no wonder a lot of boomers don't like [the book].

Q: It's interesting too, the way you look at the working class issues. You point out, on a bunch of different levels, the failure of policy and the inability for some people in power to look beyond themselves; especially with many on the liberal side of the spectrum. I think it solidified a lot of things that Generation Xers have believed over the years.

A: Growing up here, where the language of boomer liberalism is a part of the atmosphere ... it's ingrained in everybody and they constantly spout it … the self-congratulatory rhetoric of the political culture here, is just overwhelming. Then, watching it exported nationally, beginning with [Gov. Mike] Dukakis … although, it started with Ted [Sen. Edward Kennedy] in 1980 but Ted is a different case study. When Ted, in his concession speech in the '80 convention talks about, the work goes on, yes, with him, it does. He's pretty much the only person in the political hierarchy of this state who can say that and not roll your eyes. He works everyday; he's the man. The rest of them? John Kerry? Kerry's big public push of the month, right now? He wants to make sure the NFL Network makes the Pats/Giants available … that is priceless … at a time when the average Massachusetts homeowner is paying $1,000 more to keep their heat their home this year than last. What a working class hero.

And, in the meantime, where does John Kerry stand on Cape Wind? He won't say. I had an interview with him, this is going back a couple of years, and I was pressing him on Cape Wind and he was [wishy-washy]. I said, Come on, you've been talking about alternative energy, commendably, from the earliest days of your career. And you're telling me you can't give me a position? He said, you're trying to publicly criticize Ted Kennedy, who's been my mentor, blah, blah, blah. I said, No I'm not. That's not what this is about. And even if I was, what the hell does that matter compared to the agony of the working class people who you purport to represent, for whom these soaring energy costs are breaking the back, let alone the predominantly working class and poor people who bear the brunt of environmental pollution. Hello? Where are your priorities? Your actual real world priorities aren't even consistent with your life-long rhetoric. What are you doing? Unfortunately, he is an egregious example. But it is just all too common within the Massachusetts political culture. I think that the leadership, the right and left nationally, you see [that] all the time. I mean, what could be more smug and insular and arrogant and disconnected from reality than the Bush Administration? That's the second boomer presidency. The first one had its moments of unbelievable narcissism and arrogance as well. Clinton squandered his whole second term on the shoals of narcissism and "me first" thinking.

Q: Newt Gingrich is another example. I see him on C-Span and I see the brilliance and then I realize it is Newt Gingrich.

A: Brilliance? Yes, there is a lot of that in our generation. But being brilliant is not a career. It doesn't do anything for anyone unless it translated into action. And what does Newt Gingrich do with any of his ideas? He floats out the idea that he is going to run for president to jack up his speaking fees and make sure he gets on Fox News all the time. He's just a talking head. What does he actually do?

Q: Has he taken any of the ideas and actually invested his own money to see if they work? That would be the entrepreneurial thing. At least you can give Mitt Romney that; one may not like his business decisions but at least he has taken that risk to create wealth and jobs.

A: That's what I'm saying. I doing radio interviews around the country for the book, talk radio tends to be more rightwing, and a number of my interviewers wanted to get into Kennedy-bashing. And I was afraid, I'm sorry, I had to disappoint them. Because say what you will about the Kennedys and Ted, they put their money where the mouths were. Ted Kennedy drags his broken back up and back from Washington every week. I've been out in the field when he is dragging himself around to these events that if you and I were millionaires wouldn't be caught dead at. Because he is actually committed and he cares about the issues that he is dealing with. Those are just character traits that are all too absent in baby boomer political culture.

Q: Some of the statistics you talk about in the book, like productivity being up versus incomes being down, housing costs, and energy problems. Savings rates are down, foreclosures and personal debt is way up. Look at some of Gov. Deval Patrick's promises which he hasn't kept during his first year: There was no property tax relief. Nothing has been done on energy. It's amazing that no one in any kind of leadership position anywhere, will actually sit down and a real world conversation on how to fix these things.

A: Here is a Deval Patrick moment from today's paper. His spokesman is asked about what the governor has to say about the horrific gridlock that he helped fuel by releasing [state workers] out into the storm.

[The spokesman said] Well, we don't understand why it happened, we're going have to sit down and try and figure it out, but keep in mind, the governor also had a very difficult ride home. This was the comment from the spokesman. So, at least in the mind of the spokesman, what the public suffered through last night is on a par with a fat-cat CEO being driven home to Milton by a state trooper in the back of a Cadillac.

No, I'm sorry, don't even try to commiserate with that. Just say you're sorry for whatever blunders you made and get back into that office and don't come out again until you have a thoughtful, collaborative plan that will address why this happened and make sure it doesn't happen again. That's a classic sort of baby boomer moment.

Q: You have great chapters featuring Boston Minister Eugene Rivers talking about some of the violence in Boston and the Dolans, the mayor's family in Melrose, dealing with modern economic issues. Was it hard to get them to talk about these personal and private issues?

A: I was surprised that Rob Dolan and his wife did that. I just happened to be interviewing Dolan about a story - I don't even know what it was - and I was telling him about my book and we got into a conversation about what's wrong with Massachusetts. And, after talking with him for 10 minutes, I realized, this guy is perfect for what I want to say.

What really touches me the most is the e-mails from expatriates … people that have fled. I'm a local boy. I love it here in spite of everything. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else and a lot of these people still feel the same way. The level of frustration among working and middle class people who have not drunk the Kool Aid or are not circling the wagons around the turf that they have purloined is off the charts. [Massachusetts] is a great place. [But] what's being done with it is so inconsistent not just with the Kennedy legacy but really with the tradition of Massachusetts going back several hundred years.

We've always been a place where human rights and the notion of community [were] valued as or more highly than any other place in the country. The shining city on a hill; all the stuff I threw in the introduction is true. To see it squandered by these self-serving, self-adoring hacks basically is an atrocity in the making. It's like a slow motion car crash.

I was surprised that they were as candor as they were. I think the Dolans did a great service. It was easy to write the chapter on Barbara Anderson [of Citizen for Limited Taxation] although my point there was not to glorify [her] but to say … a lot of this book has gone totally over the heads of some of the BMG-types [Blue Mass Group, liberal bloggers], tin-foil hat wearers … this book, in many ways, is a shout out to real liberals, to Democrats, to stop losing. Stop losing the argument about property tax overrides by being gratuitously insulting to the taxpayers. Don't tell him he is a mean-spirited jerk because he won't part with the equivalent of a pizza a week. That's just pouring kerosene on the fire.

Here in Belmont, I think we've seen numerous examples of how to run an override campaign. Appeal to people's pride in their community. Demonstrate through transparency that you're not a crook or a profligate spender. You cannot sit there and watch the [Board of] Selectmen's meetings and Town Meeting and not come away feeling confident - with the exception of maybe a stray quarter here or maybe in every group there is an employee who really doesn't earn their pay - but I don't think you can walk away from watching those meetings and not feel that this town's budget is accounted for … that people are making a good faith effort to spend the town's taxpayer's money properly. That is the predicate for asking for more. People are not, for the most part, miserly, mean-spirited Grinches, right-wingers and all of the pejorative that get applied to tax resistant citizens here. That's not what it's all about. So, stop doing that, and more broadly, I'm trying to make an argument to Democrats nationally, about not drinking the Massachusetts Kool Aid, here are the mistakes to avoid in order to win. Watching this campaign unfold is fascinating because while I certainly endorse her, I think I say that in the book pretty clearly, the Clintons, by demonstrating how to break through on a national level, that they sort of got it about a lot of this stuff.

Q: I found it interesting that Rivers would dance around the funding issue. The federal government has money for 100,000 cops but not his alternative programs, which seem to be working. He has been doing so much to fight Boston crime for a long time and yet he can't get anyone to support him.

A: You can't if you're Gene Rivers. We were the generation that was going to change the world, change the way things were done, where our fathers and mothers, the older generation had been backward looking, we were going to be the opposite. Small is beautiful, remember that craze? How did we get from that to the Big Dig? We're all in this together and [mimicking Clinton] I'm going to 100,000 new cops on the street because we've got to fight crime, help the poor, and yet, it turns out the new cops are an unfunded mandate, being paid for by cities and towns and the federal government doesn't have a clue with what's really going on. Hurricane Katrina … the basic function of federal government, unable to be performed because there was no connection to reality. They couldn't even learn from what they were watching on TV. The whole boomer political culture in Massachusetts, and I find it evident in Washington too, really has an attitude of, You can't teach me anything … I'm so smart and I'm so creative and open-minded, if it was worth knowing or thinking about, I already know it or have thought about it. W … confronted with 9-11, God forbid I should learn from my father's example of how you handle international diplomacy … proceed with caution in the Middle East. God forbid I should learn from that example right in my own household. No, no, no … I have to do it a whole new way. And he really went to the edge to undo all that his father had done. Look at the damage that's been done.

Q: Watching the debates with the candidates, I'm surprised at how most of the top tier candidates from both parties are trying to address their constituencies and not get bogged down in the super social issues. The Democrats are talking about health care, education, and deficits; the Republicans are talking about terrorism, illegals and/or every subset around that, and taxes. Even if you flipped the issues, there would be agreement. There are Republicans that are worried about health and education and there are Democrats worried about illegals and taxes. Some of the hot button things - abortion and gun control - have not been discussed on the Democrat side. The Democrats seem to get that an issue like gun control is a losing issue in places like Georgia.

A: Rahm Emmanuel got that and look at the candidates they ran in '06. Veterans, social moderates to conservatives. Without the power … If they blow the presidency this year, that is another four years of Supreme Court appointments made by some right-winger. Is that what you want? You've got to swallow some stuff. That is how the world works. I get into this whole thing about the personal is political, where you substitute your political frame of reference your own personal gestalt, your own deeply felt believes in whatever … you've got to find that middle ground. That's what politics is when it works. And we are just bleeping it up left and right. I have been thinking about doing an op-ed on this. The Obama campaign and the Deval Patrick campaign, the similarities have sort of been obvious but it's getting eerie. Not least because it is really working.

Q: It is very similar to Deval Patrick's campaign. The themes seem similar. The people I know who are coming out to support Obama are real people - middle class, working class folks who don't like any of the candidates but who note that Obama makes them feel what they want to feel. It's people saying, you know, I want to be inspired. Whereas Hillary seems to irritate a lot of people. People like her when they see her one-on-one. But when they are in the big events, and she's screaming, it's awful. The Dolans talk about a lot of reform measures and even in Belmont they've been talking about the health care issue, as far as town employees retiring. Have you've been surprised about some of the things the leadership on Beacon Hill has been talking about, things like pension reform or state police detail reforms, all of these things that have traditionally been the third rail?

A: I'm seeing the same thing but is it lip service or is it real. Gov. Patrick, to his credit, the brilliance of the Patrick campaign was identifying the property tax infuriated people and terrifying them. That he could get away with opposing a roll back on the income tax because the property tax is where the rubber meets the road. That was very astute. And, to his credit, he did come out with these proposals for the mandatory joining of the GIC on health care costs and joining the state retirement system. Of course, even before he took office, as the best that I can tell, organized labor came in and said, you can forget about this stuff being mandatory. We'll agree to something it has to be contingent on a vote, etc. [Patrick] gave a little to get something but the statistics on it are pathetic. Something like six local unions have joined the state pension plan. Very few have joined the GIC. They are never going to do anything about details. If they do anything, it will be a token … a fig leaf. The Dolans talk about this. In the framework of generational narcissism, the baby boomer era public employees have got theirs. They won it fair and square in collective bargaining: The 5 percent payment on their health insurance … the unbelievable generous pension plans with the early retirement and everything. And they will be goddamned if they are going to give up a nickel of it. Why should they? Well, because it is destroying your own community? It is drying up job opportunities for your own sons and daughters? It doesn't register. That is the Me Generation in full flower. There is very little generational accountability or responsibility.

Q: You look at some of the books by Neil Howe and William Strauss on generational studies ["Generations," "13th Gen"]. They seem to dance around the theme of baby boomers not being accountability to anyone but themselves, especially with budgeting and other things. You take it one step further.

A: They are social scientists. I'm not. I'm a columnist, I'm a journalist. Is my theory or construct of a generational explanation for all of this debatable? Is my judgment dogmatic at times? Yes. Frankly, if you're familiar with my work, I'm a pot-stirrer. I like to do that. And I'm sarcastic. I'm just being myself, in classic baby boomer fashion. But, I'm not offering this as a Rosetta stone. I wanted it to ignite some debate and discussion and make people think and provoke people and, I guess, mission accomplished.

Q: It's provoked people. Do you think has made people think?

A: I think so. Reading Howe and Strauss was an epiphany to me. You could look at things and understand them better through this generational prism. It's not perfect. It's not a one-size fits all. It is a great point to jump off from. There isn't much of it out there, certainly in political reporting. It has gotten people talking and that's fine.