IT'S ENTIRELY possible that the claim that Friday’s hearing demonstrates a seismic shift in Boston politics amounts to journalistic hyperbole. No new facts about either Bulger brother emerged. Maybe William Bulger was merely making the smartest move possible, and he’s waiting for his connections to rescue him once again. There is some scuttlebutt — expressed in Carr’s column in Sunday’s Herald — that the Bush family might come to Bulger’s defense. It’s now believed in Boston political circles that Bulger may have given Bush père one of his most effective issues against presidential candidate Dukakis in the 1988 election: the failed clean-up of Boston Harbor. The issue damaged Dukakis’s credibility both with environmentalists and with those who viewed competence as his biggest asset. It was a major humiliation for Dukakis and may have begun the chain of events that cost him the election, despite a wide lead in the polls for much of the general campaign.

"Bulger was the one who suggested George H.W. Bush come to Boston and make an issue of the botched harbor clean-up," Carr wrote. It’s not entirely clear why Bulger would want to influence such a complicated game between Dukakis and Bush, who had no connection to Massachusetts politics. But — surprise! — there are a few theories. The most credible is self-preservation: Bulger did not believe Dukakis would win and wanted to position himself in good stead with Bush. Or that Bulger wanted an in with either candidate; at the time, Dukakis believed Bulger was being helpful to him. More likely, Bulger simply resented Dukakis’s sanctimonious positioning of himself as a reformer.

At any rate, might the Bushies feel they owe Bulger a favor? Burton deflated some of this speculation on Friday, telling the Phoenix that the White House could not pressure him to let up. "The only thing the White House claimed was executive privilege over documents we wanted from the Justice Department," Burton said, chuckling. "I told them I was going to move to hold the president in contempt unless I got them, and I got them."

That said, Burton, chair of the Government Reform Committee, is required to step down next session due to Republican term limits on chairmanships. A Meehan ally and fellow reformer, Republican Chris Shays of Connecticut, is one of his potential successors, but it is not a sure thing at this point. While something of a loose cannon — Burton is the congressman who fired a bullet into a watermelon to "re-create" the death of Clinton aide Vince Foster in an attempt to support the right-wing-conspiracy crowd’s contention that Foster had been whacked — Burton has diligently probed the FBI scandal. (As for all the Burton-bashing taking place over the watermelon incident, the Herald’s Peter Gelzinis put it in perspective when he wrote Tuesday: "Personally, I think firing bullets into a fresh watermelon in the privacy of one’s own back yard is a far cry from firing bullets into live bookmakers, rival drug dealers, stubborn girlfriends, and potential witnesses ...")

A new committee chair may change things, but with Meehan expressing interest in a Judiciary Committee probe and the chance that Shays might head the Government Reform Committee, the matter won’t go away — even if Bush tries to intervene.

A cynic, finally, could argue that even if Bulger is tarnished in a way he never was before, so what? Hasn’t Bulger’s place in the legislature already been taken by another autocratic Irish-Catholic politico, House Speaker Tom Finneran? Well, yes and no. It’s true that Finneran controls the House almost as solidly as Bulger controlled the Senate. But for all his colorful vocabulary, Finneran is a generation or two more modern than Bulger. He doesn’t speak in a brogue. Finneran’s Mattapan district lacks the romance of Bulger’s — it’s both too small and not Irish enough. And there is this: Bulger ran circles around governors like Dukakis and Weld. While Finneran has done the same with Cellucci and Swift, there’s a new guy in town with a voter mandate to run the state. Statewide voters have put Finneran on notice in a way Bulger never was.

Beyond all that, there is a vital final difference. Even if Bulger never profited from his brother’s criminal life — still an unanswered question — there is the unambiguous fact that Whitey added to Bulger’s political mystique. And some of that went away when Whitey went on the lam. Bulger now may be suffering from the converse of this dynamic. Burton suggested as much on Friday, making the point that Whitey’s absence hurt Bulger. "If Whitey would be paying attention today, he could have done his brother a real service by turning himself in," Burton said. "I’m sure taking the Fifth Amendment is going to cause ... Mr. Bulger a great deal of concern."

Things have turned upside down in state politics. The Senate president who once held every politician in thrall could not get local congressmen to shield him when he needed it — a sure sign that things have changed greatly. It is the kind of development that is in plain sight — yet few can see it. We know what prior epochs of state politics have been like — the era of Yankee dominance, the boss era of James Michael Curley and Honey Fitz, even the more recent battles between suburban reformers and urban legislative chiefs, of which Bulger was one. We don’t know yet what the next era in state politics will be like. But when we look back years from now, we may see that it began during the period between Romney’s election and Bulger’s taking the Fifth.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com