A political parlor game

Spare a thought for your public officials this morning. The poor pets must be hurting.

We learned on Friday that President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of state will be his former rival Hillary Clinton. That means US Senator John Kerry's hopes for his dream job are dashed.

Our junior senator can't catch a break. He puts his own presidential ambitions behind him, comes out for Obama early, and takes plenty of heat for it. He campaigns hard for the Illinois senator. He makes the top of a zillion short lists for the nation's top diplomatic post, a job for which he has the chops. Then, Obama passes him over in favor of Clinton.

Still, at least Kerry has that nice new Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship with which to console himself. The rest of the state's political establishment? All they have are broken dreams.

So many hungry folks up and down the political food chain had pinned their hopes on Kerry's fortunes that you could fill Fenway Park with them.

There were the big and biggish names who fancied themselves the next senator from Massachusetts. And then there were the not-so-bigs, hoping to step up into their betters' shoes. On it went all the way down the line. Thanks to Kerry's anticipated ascent, somebody out there was entertaining the possibility of finally being elected secretary of their PTA.

That's the only way politics really changes around here these days. Massachusetts used to be the model for raucous, scrappy political races. Now we have one of the nation's lamest political cultures, our elections among the least-contested in the entire country.

Primaries? How very rude. Instead of throwing the bums out, we politely wait for our eternally incumbent representatives to find the door for themselves.

Then the free-for-all. And this one was going to be particularly good. Appetites and ambitions whetted by Kerry's 2004 presidential bid, the political world was positively giddy with the possibilities.

Attorney General Martha Coakley had her eye on Kerry's spot, as did Representatives Stephen Lynch of South Boston and Michael Capuano of Somerville. Others mentioned included Republicans Kerry Healey, the former lieutenant governor, and Andy Card, the former White House chief of staff.

Actually, everybody was mentioned. Some only by themselves.

The unlikely possibility that yielded the juiciest, most wide-open scenario involved the governor. Deval Patrick becomes a US senator, opening up the corner office, into which steps Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray temporarily. Then Murray, State Treasurer Tim Cahill, Coakley, and an army of others would fight it out, probably leaving another office open, begetting yet another scramble, and so on.

However, the legions who have their eye on Patrick's job have been dealt a double blow by Obama, who did not pick our governor for attorney general before he did not pick Kerry for secretary of state. But what if he had? Back to our parlor game: Coakley as US senator begets a stampede of district attorneys and lawyers for her job.

Or a Lynch victory for Kerry's seat? That could bring the whole South Boston team up a rung: State Senator Jack Hart goes to Washington, and Representative Brian Wallace to the state Senate, leaving a spot on Beacon Hill for one of the neighborhood's Boston City councilors.

Half the City Council would jump at Lynch's seat - Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, who could save himself the misery of trying to take down Boston's uberincumbent mayor, for example. District Councilors John Tobin and Bill Linehan would be sorely tempted, too.

Oh, it was going to be such heaven. But it's all over now. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that dangled so tantalizingly have been cruelly snatched away. All of that ambition is still bottled up, desperate for an outlet.

It's enough to make a politician ponder the unthinkable - term limits.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.