There were two presidential debates last night: one viewed by huge swaths of the electorate, and whatever was streamed into the Boston Herald’s new offices on D Street.
Most folks saw Mitt Romney sitting back, taking a good deal of abuse from President Barack Obama and nursing what Romney’s camp obviously believes to be a solid and growing lead in the polls. Romney backed off his previous hard line on the Middle East. At one point, he appeared to channel George McGovern, declaring, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.” He threw some bromides at Israel, talked in fuzzy generalities, and got out of town as quickly as he could. “He had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost,” a New York Times editorial charged. “That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues… On issue after issue, Mr. Romney sounded as if he had read the boldfaced headings in a briefing book — or a freshman global history textbook — and had not gone much further than that.”
And then there’s the debate the Herald saw. The tabloid leads today with a column headlined, “Desperate prez launches zingers, but not much else.” The paper twists around in circles to argue that Obama “won the staring contest, but he didn’t win the debate, and that means trouble for his re-election hopes.” Even the right-leaning National Review gave the debate to Obama, but the Herald couldn’t bring itself to follow suit.
The paper piggybacks on the debate by formally announcing its endorsement of Romney: “Voters have not merely a safe and steady alternative [to Obama] but a proven leader and an extraordinarily skilled expert in the art of the economic turnaround… In Mitt Romney voters have the choice of a strong, smart hand on the helm, a decent, caring man, who lives his faith, who loves his country and would serve it well.”
All of which begs the question: Has the Boston Herald lost the calluses on its hands?
A year ago, when Romney was treading water, desperately fending off the likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, Obama came to New Hampshire for a campaign event. The Herald marked the occasion with a Romney op-ed tweaking the president. The column unveiled Romney’s so-called “Obama Misery Index” — a campaign prop it has long since relegated to the dustbin.
The Herald played up the Romney column, slapping it on the cover under a picture of a sad-looking Obama and the blaring headline “WHY HE’S FAILING.” The White House retaliated two months later, declining a Herald request for pool duty during an Obama trip to Boston. A White House spokesman cited the Romney op-ed cover in an email to the Herald, saying, “I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”
Howie Carr returned fire on behalf of his paper. His thesis amounted to, why would Obama think the Herald is in the tank for Mitt Romney, when Mitt Romney is so clearly a repugnant candidate, being a prissy rich guy and all?
Here’s Howie: “All we asked was to be in the press pool. But nooooo. Because the Obama worshipers object to the front-page placement of an op-ed piece by Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney! Mother o’ God, they oughta be in church, praying to get Mitt Romney as their opponent in the presidential race next fall, but instead, they’re bent out of shape.”
There was also this: “Herald readers work for a living. The Herald is for people who didn’t move here from New York to look down their noses at everyone who has calluses on their hands, who aren’t consumed by guilt about the trust funds that support them in their leisure. And the Beautiful People know so little about us that they think we love Mitt Romney. Boy, have they got a wake-up call coming next year in November.”
That wake-up call? We’re still waiting for it.
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
New England Compounding Center faced numerous complaints over the years, but a 2006 review the state commissioned may have been tainted, the Globe reports, by the fact that the CEO of the Illinois pharmacy firm hired to carry out the review was himself under indictment for fraud and was later convicted and imprisoned in a case involving a product blamed for blinding people. The Wall Street Journal report on the state report is here. WBUR reports that complaints were persistent but discipline minimal.
A Cape Cod drug dealer who was released in the wake of the drug lab scandal is back in jail for alleged drug possession. State courts try prioritizing cases where drug possession was the sole criminal offense, bumping prisoners with other offenses to the back of the line.
Peter Lucas, the Lowell Sun columnist, says sentencing reform is dead in the wake of the Annie Dookhan scandal. For good measure, he blames Gov. Deval Patrick.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
More chaos on the Lawrence Licensing Board, as another appointee of Mayor William Lantigua may be holding the position illegally, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Two Cranston, Rhode Island, officials resign rather than give an absentee ballot to a convicted child killer, Reuters reports.
The former building commissioner in Leominster says he was let go by Mayor Dean Mazzarella in a dispute over the mayor’s former girlfriend, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Ayer rejects Devens land taking, the Lowell Sun reports.
The owner of the historic Orpheum Theater in New Bedford has put the building up for sale after negotiations with a local group seeking to preserve the century-old theater stalled.
A petition to downzone Central Square in Cambridge is taken off the table.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
President Obama says the sequestration cuts will not happen, Politico reports.
ELECTION 2012
President Obama and Mitt Romney go at for a final time on foreign policy (with a good bit of jobs and the economy mixed in). The National Review takes the position that while Obama may have won the final debate, his line of attacks indicate Romney is winning the race. The Weekly Standard says Romney passed the reasonableness test. The American Spectator says Romney positioned himself during the course of the three debates to win the “Not Obama” vote.The Washington Post rounds up the winners and losers. A New York Times editorial mocks Romney’s final debate performance. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg believes Obama has squelched unease among Jewish voters. The early polls give Obama a clear debate win. But is it enough?
Sen. Scott Brown says his Republican affiliation will help him get things done in Washington, the Lowell Sun reports. Brown and Elizabeth Warren battle for women voters, WBUR reports.
In a move that signals the very deep hole Democratic US Rep. John Tierney is in, the decidedly liberal-leaning Boston Globe goes man-bites-dog and endorses his Republican challenger, Richard Tisei. The Gloucester Times reports Tierney appears to be facing an uphill battle.
Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch and Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey urged defeat of the medical marijuana ballot question.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The casino developer Ameristar unveils its proposal for a Springfield gaming complex.
Cerberus, the New York private equity company that owns Steward Health Care, is seeking financing to buy the supermarket chain Supervalu, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A development project in the Fenway could unlock construction up and down the Mass. Turnpike, CommonWealth’s Paul McMorrow says in the Globe.
EDUCATION
Boston school officials plan to seek approval to convert the struggling Marshall Elementary School into an in-district charter school run by the education group Unlocking Potential. The nonprofit school turnaround organization has overseen dramatic improvement at the former Gavin Middle School in South Boston, which was converted to an in-district charter, and it has been put in charge of one of the lowest performing schools in Lawrence as part of the turnaround plan for the city’s district schools — an initiative that is spotlighted in the current issue of CommonWealth.
Brockton High School principal Sue Szachowicz will retire in December so her departure won’t distract from the graduation in June. Szachowicz is credited with turning Brockton High into a model of urban academic achievement, which she talked about last year with CommonWealth’s Michael Jonas.
TRANSPORTATION
The Fall River Herald News has an interesting editorial calling for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority to “reinvent the wheel” by expanding bus service into the South Coast to serve commuters going to Providence or coming to Fall River.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Daniel Yergin, in the Wall Street Journal, says the surge in natural gas and oil production in the United States has far-reaching ramifications.
The Springfield Republican salutes Northampton’s introduction of five charging stations for electric cars.
Boston ranks 9th in clean tech, State House News reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Lawyers for Whitey Bulger plan to again seek a delay in his trial, which is scheduled to start in March.