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The Bluest State by Jon Keller
Being from Massachusetts and having a moderately liberal bent, I treated this book with skepticism at first, thinking that it was just another right-wing bashing of liberalism and all it’s supposed evils: it’s not. It is an examination of how the politics of the state are destroying the Democratic Party on a national level.
As a journalist who has covered Mass. Politics for almost 30 years, Keller does not have to look too far to see what is wrong with his home state, and at the end it seems to come back to Baby Boomer politicians, both Republican and Democrat, who infuse politics with their own narcissism and sense of entitlement. From the Kennedy excesses, to the debacle of the Big Dig (in which a structural problem was responsible for the death of 2 people a month after it opened), to rampant Political Correctness (“what the f___ is a holiday tree?”) this book opens it up and tells us what happens when one group is entrenched, in charge, and aloud to screw things up unabated.
I left Massachusetts 14 years ago and have never looked back, and apparently I am not alone.
What I learned: When any one party, Democratic, Republican, what have you, is in charge for too long, it is human nature for that party to turn corrupt in an effort to hold on to that power.
Note: This is a great companion piece to the brilliant “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” by Tom Frank.
I would recommend two other books: “Growing Up Fast” by Joanna Lipper and “Foul Ball” by Jim Bouton as great examples of books about my hometown which illustrate, on a personal level, how things are so screwed up in the Bay State because of cronyism (Foul Ball) and economic depression (Growing up Fast)
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