WHY NOT PRESIDENT FLYNN? Flynn may have lost verbal war, but won respect

The Boston Herald

What amazes me is how civilized it all is. The way men can stand on a stage in front of a podium within arms reach of their enemies and shout nasty things to them and about them, things you wouldn't even whisper about someone you hate, because you really don't hate anyone that much. Yet there they are, in front of an audience, in front of reporters, screaming, berating and accusing one another of terrible things.

Sometimes they yell so hard that the veins in their necks bulge and sometimes their eyes water and their skin turns color, white or red, depending on their original shade; and you think, watching all this, that any second now, one of them is going to lose it. One of them is going to lean over and slug another and punches will fly and there will be blood-stained oxford white shirts all over the place.

But that never happens. Incredibly, after all the stabs in the back and hits below the belt, the "debate" (that incredibly civilized word for a nasty fight) ends, and the enemies SMILE at one another, pose for the camera and actually SHAKE HANDS!

That's why I hate politics. How can you trust a guy who shakes hands with someone who has publicly eviscerated him?

More importantly, why should you trust him?

Watching Mayor Flynn last Tuesday night at the mayoral debate (how classy it sounds) sponsored by the Boston Herald and Suffolk University, I was amazed at how well he kept his cool. He scowled a lot, and rocked from one foot to the other, and kept taking his hands in and out of his pockets, and pouring water, and drinking some, and rubbing his chin and picking invisible lint off his jacket, and biting his lip and grimacing, while the two men who are eyeing his job steadily tore him apart.

But he never once lost control.

And the Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler said some pretty nasty things. He accused the mayor not only of being a publicity hound, an ineffectual leader and a heartless dictator who doesn't care about Boston's kids, but worse: He attacked him for being who he is.

It was that unspoken accusation that must have made the Mayor's blood boil. Ray Flynn was being criticized for being Ray Flynn: accessible, visible and likable.

"I don't like her because of the way she walks, or smiles, or shows off," young girls often say. "I don't like her because I don't like her friends."

This is not a fair way to judge a person, we tell these girls.

But here are grown men who should know better saying the same things, only with different words. Boston Teachers Union President and mayoral candidate, Edward Doherty, said that Flynn's habit of jogging through the city might increase his popularity, but would not make the streets safer. So how would he make the streets safer? That would have been a pertinent point. But he didn't choose to address this. He chose to criticize Flynn, instead, not for something for which he might deserve criticism, but for something as irrelevant as jogging.

Then there was the Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler's remark that if he were mayor he would appoint a qualified police commissioner, and not one of his childhood friends. As if the two are mutually exclusive. As if this decision were somehow proof of Flynn's incompetence.

Flynn, to his credit, did not attack back. He held his own. He stuck his hands in his pockets and kept to the issues. The pundits said he didn't win the debate, that Doherty, because of his unexpected wit, came out ahead.

Doherty did outshine his opponents in the category of verbal sparring. But as far as fighting fair, Flynn was the unheralded winner.