Yes, I acknowledged for the umpteenth time in the last week, I saw the pictures of Ian Bowles holding two very cute bear cubs during a recent visit to Conway.
“When I saw it, I thought of you instantly,” my friend and former colleague said, with the same tone of amusement I’d heard from a dozen people before him. This particular fellow had sent me a link to a story in one of the Boston papers, followed up with a phone call in which he seemed to mock me more that he did the state’s energy and environment czar.
I wasn’t sure exactly why so many of my friends and family members who live in the eastern part of the state felt the need to complete the loop, to make sure I didn’t miss the colossal news coming out of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Sure, I like bears. I’ve followed the state’s long, successful effort to revive the black bear population in the state. And I’m interested in Ian Bowles, the man Gov. Deval Patrick appointed to head the EOEEA, a department that, for the first time in state history, combines energy and the environment.
But did my friends and kinfolk really think it possible that a bigwig state official could come out here for an annual photo op with bear cubs without its being saturated by the local media?
Besides, I thought I’d said everything there was to say about politicians and bears last year. Almost exactly 12 months before Bowles traded in coat and tie for a spanking new ranger-green winter coat and came to cuddle a couple of cubs, his boss came to Whately for the same purpose. The governor, wearing a new winter coat and a green billed cap, held three bear cubs as state biologists gave the mother bear a medical checkup.
It was clear from the flood of phone calls and emails I received last year that Deval Patrick’s bear photo op was effective in bringing the governor some publicity—though not necessarily good publicity. Most people I spoke to about it thought the bears looked adorable while the governor looked ridiculous and not a little desperate for a diversion from bigger political problems. A few people noted, with mild irritation, that Patrick was horning in on recognition that should have gone to Jim Cardoza, the state wildlife biologist who championed the bear comeback for decades. (Cardoza retired last year.)
The reaction to this year’s photo op was harder to understand. For one thing, the vast majority of communications I received about Bowles’ bear mugging came from people who made a big deal about Patrick’s visit last year. For them, the idea of these notably urbane politicos venturing to the remote Pioneer Valley to pose with bear cubs seemed to epitomize the fecklessness and fakery of the Patrick administration, while underscoring the common view of the Valley as hopelessly bucolic.
At first, I thought my pals were including me in a joke aimed at the governor and his cabinet secretary. Now, after a weekend spent admitting to the same folks that, yes, I saw Patrick’s performance at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast in South Boston, I’m fairly sure I’m the intended target of scorn. What apparently connects me to these painful political moments—moments that show the governor and his team disconnected from any of the serious matters of state that should now occupy them—is my support, real or imagined, for Deval Patrick.
Though I can forgive most of my tormentors for not having a more nuanced view of my opinion of Patrick and his administration—they live outside the Advocate’s area of circulation and haven’t read most of my criticisms—that hardly eases my pain. Truth is, embarrassing as it was to see Patrick trying to tweak his main gubernatorial rival, Republican Charles Baker, for not showing up to the annual fete—Baker was the smart one, governor—I see little choice ahead but to hold my nose and vote again for Deval.
It would be nice to be able to support a politician who wasn’t simply the lesser of two evils, someone with strong principles and enough practical sense to avoid looking like a pandering fool.
Sadly, we won’t have that option this November.
