What do Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry and Mitt Romney all have in common? Obviously, they are politicians from the state of Massachusetts who have sought or are seeking the presidency.
Since John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960, however, no Bay State politician has been behind the bid desk in the Oval Office. The bastion of the Northeast and–as we are often nostalgically reminded these days–site of the Boston Tea Party, what has happened to the state’s national political prestige?
Perhaps the genesis of this “Bay State Curse” happened in the 1972 presidential election, when Senator George McGovern was embarassed by President Richard Nixon, winning only the electoral votes from the commonwealth of Massachusetts. That vote had the effect–at the time–of placing Massachusetts as a national ideological outsider (how many successful candidates have we seen from Alaska, Utah, Idaho or Wyoming recently?).
In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy tried unsuccessfully to launch a primary challenge against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, despite wide media popularity. In 1988, George H.W. Bush used the phrase “Massachusetts liberal” repeatedly to pariah Michael Dukakis, and went on to wipe the map with him. In 1992, although Senator Paul Tsongas would win in the New Hampshire primary, an upstart young governor from Arkansas would claim himself to be the “Comeback Kid” and steal the nomination. And, of course, in 2004, amid public dissatisfaction with two full-scale land wars, Senator John Kerry appeared out of touch and too elitist to be the American president; he narrowly lost the blue-collar state of Ohio to George W. Bush, and with it, the presidential election.
What luck does this hold for Mitt Romney? Notably, the names we have mentioned thus far have been Democrats. But Romney became Governor of Massachusetts largely due to his liberal tendencies–a fact that he has tried vehemently to ignore, deny and even lie about. Indeed, during his time as Governor of Massachusetts, the commonwealth was among the top five states in the country in terms of federal funding per capita. This self-proclaimed “small-government conservative” had no problem with federal aid for his state then.
Will Romney reverse the Bay State Curse? Only time will tell
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