Democrats as models
The Democrats lined up behind Governor Mitt Romney on the stage of Faneuil Hall last week should have negotiated a modeling fee. Imagine the residuals the fawning extras might have reaped from Romney's inevitable campaign reproductions of the sham signing ceremony of the bogus ''universal" health insurance bill.
Too late. The hapless Democrats, apparently mesmerized by rave reviews of the legislation in the clueless national press, got punked.
Don't sympathize with House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi when he whines that the ''disingenuous" Republican governor never told him he intended to veto the part of the bill requiring larger employers to provide health insurance or pay $295 per employee for the state to help provide it. Romney not only told DiMasi, he told anyone who could read. He laid out his objections in a Wall Street Journal piece published a full day before key Massachusetts Democrats, including the state's senior senator, inexplicably chose to pose for that GOP campaign ad.
What part of ''The fee is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, and so I will take corrective action" did DiMasi not understand?
The bill, a first but by no means certain step toward expanding healthcare coverage to the 530,000 uninsured in Massachusetts by 2007, rests on twin mandates for employers and individuals to shoulder the cost with the state and federal governments. Why pat the back of the man who tried to knock out the employer assessment, the support beam Democrats fought so hard to erect? Why stay silent when Romney tried to gut provisions in the bill to give consumers a voice on the Public Health Council, to restore dental and eye care benefits for the poor, and to protect mental health benefits for Medicaid recipients?
The Democrat-dominated Legislature is likely to override Romney's vetoes, but the photo op in Faneuil Hall made clear that Democrats in Massachusetts have lost all of their political instincts. Romney snowed a lot of guys who should know better. The image of a smiling Senator Edward M. Kennedy sharing the ''watershed" moment with Romney evoked memories of Kennedy posing in 2002 with President Bush for the signing of the ''historic" No Child Left Behind Act, the education reform measure that still has not been fully funded.
Here we go again.
Beneath all the hoopla and self-congratulation are some fundamental, unanswered questions. How much will compulsory health insurance actually cost the consumer? Will those too well off to qualify for Medicaid but too poor to pay health insurance premiums be able to afford the policies? Will insurers be able to craft comprehensive coverage at a low cost? Are the state and private employers willing to shoulder additional expenses if healthcare costs continue to rise? Why spoil the party by asking questions no one on Beacon Hill can answer?
Democrats, as leery of being labeled ''polarizing" as they are of being called ''unpatriotic," have developed an irrational fear of rhetorical confrontation that is costing them credibility as well as elections. Voters are eager for bipartisan cooperation, not for blind cooption. They respect compromise, not capitulation. What the public witnessed last week in Massachusetts was Democratic complicity in a staged campaign event designed to promote the presidential ambitions of a Republican governor selling an unproven ability to work cooperatively with his ideological adversaries.
If there is any doubt that Democrats are experiencing a full-blown identity crisis in Massachusetts, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly confirmed it during his interview with reporters from The Globe and New England Cable News network. Asked to identify his political role models, Reilly, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year, named former governors Michael S. Dukakis, William F. Weld, and A. Paul Cellucci. For the would-be standard-bearer of a flat-footed state Democratic Party, I suppose one out of three is not bad.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 
