Contenders

Coming of age

Part 3

by Michael Crowley

Standing at a podium and facing a semicircle of rumpled students in a Tufts University auditorium, Joe is delivering a voter-apathy warning to an audience that appears badly in need of it. During the question-and-answer session, one student lobs a smart-alecky question about the recent fuss over the Consumer Price Index, a stultifyingly technical subject that has to do with the way inflation is measured. A few kids snicker at the geeky question. Most eyes glaze over.

Given this, some politicians might explain how the CPI overstates inflation by failing to take into account product substitution. Or they might discuss models for calculating the deficit. Instead, Joe pounces. His voice rises as he describes his elderly, pensionless neighbor in Brighton. "Her entire income is Social Security!", he declares. And now, "they've hired a bunch of sharpies who've come in and said, `Oh, we're overstating the cost of living.' . . . We've come up with another sophisticated way of zapping the poor." Question answered.

It's a classic display of one of Joe's great talents: eliding difficult details to get at the gist of a matter. And it comes in quite handy during complex hearings of the House Banking Committee, which Joe has served on since coming to Congress in 1987.

"Joe will often start talking from prepared notes," says a Democratic aide to a banking-committee member, but then will quickly lose patience with policy gobbledygook. "He'll kind of look up and push the paper aside" in order to offer his own, boiled-down summary, explains the aide: " `What this means, Mr. Chairman, is. . . .' "

If this style displays Joe's keen political instincts and an ability to envision the effects of legislation on people, it also reveals a troubling impatience with policy details.

"Unfortunately," says the aide, "on this committee, the details are very important."

One argument in support of Joe is that as governor he would schmooze the legislature and special interests, and would have a crack Kennedy-machine staff backing him up on policy. The trouble is, although Joe can move the masses with a speech, he also tends to piss people off.

"He certainly doesn't have patience with other speakers," adds the Democratic aide. "There are members who don't like him. He comes in, sits down, and is very quick to condemn other people."

One Republican who works with the banking committee agrees, saying it's typical for Joe to chat and glad-hand other members during hearings until he is asked to sit down and be quiet. In his first days in Congress, Joe riled other members with ham-fisted attempts to switch to more prestigious committees.

Joe isn't exactly considered a gentle boss, either.

"He uses anger to manage his staff," reports a former aide, who points to the unusually high turnover in Joe's office. "The staffers who stay on are usually ones who are really thick-skinned or have some penchant for self-loathing."

Others former aides spin it differently: "He sets a very high standard," says Michael Powell, Joe's chief of staff from 1989 to 1992. "He's not a weekend warrior. He has very strong feelings about things, and I think sometimes people misinterpret that as being rough-and-tumble and impatient."

Nevertheless, Joe has gone through six chiefs of staff since 1986. If you accept the argument that good help could plug Joe's policy gaps in the State House, this is not comforting.

Part 4

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.