A big week for Patrick
Ask Deval Patrick what links him to President Bill Clinton, who will be in Massachusetts today campaigning and raising money for him, and one word leaps from his mouth: hope.
``The president ran in '92 and again in '96 very much on an agenda of hope," Patrick said. ``He talked about hope, how tangible a thing hope is, and he talked about it from his own life experience. I understood it then, I understood it before he talked about it, because of my own life experience. I know what a powerful thing hope is. It's not an abstraction."
He was speaking at the end of a bruising week in the campaign. An outrageous story, not in this newspaper, revealing that Patrick's brother-in-law had been convicted of raping Patrick's sister and was an unregistered sex offender prompted former governor Michael Dukakis to call this, appropriately, the dirtiest campaign he had ever seen, one far surpassing his own experience.
On Friday, Patrick fired back in righteous anger. By Saturday, he was speaking with pride about how his family had weathered the storm. ``The family has really pulled together. Everyone's been strong, and that's been a very affirming thing."
The rivalry between Patrick and Kerry Healey has become a study in polar opposites, between the relentlessly positive Patrick and an opponent whose campaign becomes grimmer and more resentful by the day.
``I don't want to be negative because I'm not a negative person," Patrick said. ``I've been talking for a year and a half about trying to reach people who check out, and part of the reason they do is because politics is something this negative and off-putting. So I can't break faith with that."
Every week is important this close to Election Day, but this week looms as especially important to the Patrick campaign. Clinton's visit today, a debate on Thursday night, and a visit Friday by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois offer an opportunity to get off the defensive and reclaim the momentum. Patrick seems eager to get back to discussing Healey's record.
``What we have to do is point out not just the failures in the Healey record, but the fact that the strategy of negativity is to draw attention away from the failures of the Healey record," Patrick said. ``If I had a record as poor on the economy, on higher education, on health care -- on crime, for that matter -- as this administration does, I'd want to change the subject, too."
Some believe Patrick has been too reluctant to drop his gloves and fight back against Healey's onslaught of negative attacks. He believes voters will distinguish between legitimate issues and wild punches. He believes they will ultimately reject a candidate who has made no case for why she should be governor.
Healey's campaign has not only been desperate, it has been contemptuous of the voters. This has become the hope-versus-fear campaign.
``Fear is how we've been governed, it's how we've been influenced, it's how we've been held back for a long time," Patrick said. ``I think the only way we can do that is with a different kind of politics."
Healey's is a traditional Republican campaign, except with far fewer ideas and far more venom. When William F. Weld wiped out Representative Mark Roosevelt in 1994, this is what passed for an attack ad: a commercial mocking Roosevelt for missing many legislative votes, even though he lived only a few steps away from the State House.
From that we have progressed to this campaign in which nothing is too old, irrelevant, or personal to be tossed into the fray. No wonder Patrick finally got angry Friday. This election is a choice, all right.
``I have to keep my eye on the prize, and the prize is not just Nov. 7, though that is a step on the way," Patrick said. ``The prize is how we reinvent our civic and political life, and I'm going to stay on that point, because I think it's transcendent. It's how we got this far, and that's how we'll get across the line on Nov. 7."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 