Rising above partisanship
This, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why the people of Massachusetts hired businessman Mitt Romney to be their leader.
With bold, creative action, the Republican governor saved the city of Boston -- and, in turn, the Democrats gathering within it -- from deep, enduring embarrassment at next week's convention.
By coming to the aid of Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Romney stepped in where John Kerry and Ted Kennedy stood down. As a result, he has spared the DNC from jeering, shouting police picketers, protesters who would have measured success in the number of events they got canceled and the number of times their angry taunts were played on the network news. They might still picket, but it's impossible to take them seriously now.
The beauty is in the counterintuition. Not so long ago, Republicans would do anything in their power to engineer sneering protests at Democratic conventions. Even this year, don't doubt for a second that GOP strategists were salivating on the Oval Office floor at the prospect of bedlam in Boston.
No matter. The Republican governor decided his allegiance belonged more to his state than his party, a change in itself.
Closer readers may have noticed that I've spent no small amount of ink on Romney's early actions, believing him to be a playbook Republican following the party line on issues irrelevant to the public. Truth is, I suspected he had become an overly ambitious political bore.
But the Romney that emerged this past week was the Romney I thought we'd get back in the 2002 gubernatorial campaign: an intellectually secure businessman who eschewed partisanship for the common cause, results being more important than process, with plentiful credit to go around.
Yesterday afternoon, the new Romney called from his cellphone. I didn't know we were still speaking; he didn't know we weren't. Go figure.
''It's a simple matter of public safety," he said. ''I know some have said public safety wasn't going to be compromised by a picket line. But it seemed straightforward enough that when you have a special national security event, you wanted to be firing on all cylinders. You didn't want tired police."
Two weeks ago, Romney directed his staff to approach the head of the state Labor Relations Commission with the governor's ''strong belief" that arbitration be expedited to resolve the standoff.
The acting chairman quietly refused. So Romney acted. In swift fashion, he pushed aside the acting head last Thursday and installed a new one. Four days later, arbitration was expedited. Three days after that, it was settled. Two years of arguments were resolved in a week.
Asked if his actions ran counter to the wishes of his own party, Romney laughed and said he purposely didn't consult with Washington officials.
''My first responsibility on being elected was to serve the public and to do the public good," he said. ''We have an event that could be the target of terrorism. I could not conceive of politics influencing my actions in that setting."
For that matter, he said he's going to take a holiday from politics next week and not criticize Kerry. ''I want the city to shine, and the state to shine," he said.
Perhaps most interesting, when I made reference to Menino being a lonely pol these days, Romney cut me off and said: ''He's not lonely at all. He's got the public with him.
''The person of real leadership is the mayor," Romney added. ''The mayor could have easily said he was folding on this, and the citizens of Boston would pay for him to have a nice quiet convention. But he stayed with what he believed was right."
An hour later, I picked up the phone to find a very relieved Menino on the other end of the line. ''I really appreciate what he's done," he said of Romney. ''He truly believed it's the right thing to do."
I'd suggest a group hug before the convention, but I think that's already happened. This is how it's supposed to work in government and too rarely does.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 