Face up to it; they loved us
As Sally Field so famously said, ''You like me! You really like me!"
Bostonians might as well be reciting those exact lines today, shouting them to the sky. We wrung our hands so hard, for so long, that we nearly broke our fingers. And now, as the earnest delegates, fat-cat contributors, self-important pols, and overheated television analysts all make their way out of town, Boston is receiving nothing but raves.
That's right, raves.
I apologize for bringing you such grim news. I know it's hard for you to accept, what with a couple of centuries of built-up inferiority and our security blanket of angst. But the convention was an overwhelming success, inside the hall and on the streets, and it might be time to accept this foreign fate.
For starters, the union protesters stayed home, the traffic jams never materialized, and all the fears of an attack were never realized, making the stiff security somewhat more palatable. Inside the hall, it was the most unified Democratic show in a long, long time.
But that's just the baseline. Every media member, delegate, and politician that I've asked over the past few days said they fell in love with a town that they now admit they never really knew. They talked about the great restaurants, the clean streets, the beautiful parks like the Public Garden, the stunning waterfront, and the fact that so much of downtown is accessible by foot.
They also talked about how friendly the city was, accommodating, even helpful.
Us? Yes, us.
Granted, they haven't seen us on a freezing day in January when sleet is icing the streets and the slush swells to shin level. They didn't necessarily get a long look at the absurdity of so much of our politics and the harsh bite of a lot of our press.
And, yes, they might have gotten a slightly distorted view of things. Whether they're from Seattle or Sioux City or Savannah, they leave thinking Boston must be the most livable place in the world, what with all that available parking, no traffic, gaggles of friendly cops on every street corner, and the fact they can get a reservation at any hour in the best restaurants in town. That, after all, has been their experience.
For one week, the whole city felt like a failed colonial theme park, an urban version of Plimoth Plantation. You could have dropped a bomb in Post Office Square during the 5 o'clock rush hour and the only one harmed would have been Ben Affleck and only because he was everywhere.
Still, no one is proposing that we do this every year. They came, the Democrats did, and we conquered, though not yet our own lowly sense of ourselves.
But they're smart, these people. While we compare ourselves only to New York, they're contrasting us with Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. In that kind of competition, we come up a winner every time.
People, meaning select locals, will continue to complain, fueled by commentators who like to play to the crowd. They'll whine about the pay packages to the firefighters and police. They'll moan about the lost business at a smattering of restaurants.
They're not entirely wrong. But it's what you choose to dwell on that matters most, and this city tends to dwell on the worst, even as it has transformed itself into one of the nation's best. That's the way we are.
We hosted an extraordinarily successful convention, arguably the most seamless and unified Democratic gathering in most of our adult lifetimes and one that has left visitors longing to return to our city. It showed a spirit of adventure and accomplishment.
We're not going to do this every year. We'd be smart not to do it again for a long time. But we did it once, and we did it right, and Tom Menino's prediction that it will pay dividends for a long time to come looks like a safe bet.
They really do like us. Now we've got to learn to like ourselves.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.
