Staying power

Forgive me if I'm asking too much, but on this Election Day, the high holy day of any democracy, here's the one true thing I want: a governor willing to work for an entire four-year term.

In other words, I want what just about everyone else in the country already has, which is someone who respects the sweep and the power of the highest elective office in the state, someone good for his or her word, someone not suffering from attention deficit disorder of the political variety.

An outrageous request? Maybe, given our history here.

Mitt Romney never technically resigned, but for all practical purposes he ended his governorship that afternoon last December when he stood in the State House and announced, "I've got the job done I set out to do."

Really? So all those crumbling roads and bridges didn't matter? The spike in crime wasn't on his radar screen? Homelessness? Homeland security? Better oversight of the Big Dig?

Then he jetted off for the more hospitable environs of pretty much any place that wasn't here. When I saw him on the news yesterday stumping with Kerry Healey, I had this sense that I knew this guy from somewhere, somewhere a long time ago.

I remembered him holding some bolts at a press conference. Wait a minute: Doesn't he work for Bechtel?

Before him, it was Paul Cellucci, who left Massachusetts to serve as the US ambassador to Canada a little more than two years into his only elected term.

Commendably, even miraculously, he kept a straight face when he told the gathered members of the news media: "It's in the great tradition of democracies. When asked to serve your country, you do so."

And a good job he did of serving, too. In his tenure, Canada never attacked the United States, and the United States never attacked Canada, so it has to be seen as a big win all around.

Before Cellucci, of course, it was William F. Weld, bored out of his substantial brain midway through his second term, so much so that he resigned to fight what he always knew would be a losing battle to be confirmed as the US ambassador to Mexico. You got the unmistakable sense that he was just looking for the next limousine out of town.

And while we're at it, throw Dukakis into the mix, though at least once he lost his bid for the White House he still showed up for work on Beacon Hill every day.

For trivia's sake, the last elected governor of Massachusetts who never tried to leave: Edward J. King, who served from 1979 to 1983.

It's not that it's a bad job, at least not from the outside looking in.

The position comes with a car and State Police driver, a security detail, an office with a Boston Common view, plenty of discretionary travel, and a sizable staff that probably has fresh coffee and the papers waiting every morning on the governor's desk.

What do we lose with these short-timing governors, those who come in with a punch-list, then feel perfectly free to flee once all, or even most, of the items are checked off?

Here's what we lose: We lose the experience that only a sitting governor can have.

We lose the perspective of someone who has been in office, who has traveled the state, who has met the people and shared a little bit of their lives. We lose the institutional knowledge of someone who knows the systems, the laws, the people, and the subtle ways in which things get done.

We elect a person, not a list of proposals.

We give that person a massive amount of authority and a flood of our hopes. And then we expect this governor to learn on the job, to grow into the job, to become a better leader with every passing day, and to see things through to the end.

That hasn't happened in far too long. Today, whether the state elects Deval L . Patrick or Kerry Healey or maybe even Christy Mihos, maybe all that will finally change.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.