Lunch In Boston

I got up before it is human to do so to get to Boston. The Conference and the taxi were waiting, the phone ringing as I was just buckling my belt. Too soon. I was going to forget something. The Conference could wait, since I could fudge my arrival if necessary. What I couldn’t fudge was lunch with the Secretary.

He was a senior- very senior- official in the handling of the State’s Homeland Security effort. The Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, is the man that appointed him. He is something of a rock star in the Republican Party. I think he thinks he is going somewhere, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. He was all over this conference, even agreeing to give the kickoff address.

I get a kick out of hearing him called “Governor Romney.” I know in my heart that it isn’t him, even if he ran the terror-free Salt Lake City Olympics and the Democratic Presidential Convention.

The Governor is his Dad, slick-back steely-haired handsome George, who my Dad worked for and who went on to be a fine three-time Governor of Michigan. Then he was killed politically or accidentally telling the truth.

I remember it like it was yesterday. After all, he was the first really famous man I had ever met. He had become a legend at the family dinner table just for being the President of the Company and signing Dad’s check. In the company town of Detroit, George was a legend because he took two famous but failing companies and mooshed them together to make the American Motors Rambler. The sleek Hudson name ended in 1957, and “Nash” became hyphenated with the word “Rambler.”

That was a big deal. But what was breathtaking was the vision thing. George decided that what America needed was a simple, affordable and efficient vehicle. The late ‘50s market rewarded his daring, and sales quadrupled in two years,

They used to call the car industry in Detroit the “Big Three and the Little Two.” That includes the three that still exist, and Studebaker and American Motors. The little Rambler leaped right over Studebaker and passed most of the Big Three’s brands to become the third best-selling model in the United States.

I know some people who think that if the company had stuck with the vision, like Volkswagen, they might still be around.

I’m one of them, and saddened that we have to learn the same lessons about the real cost of oil three or four times in a single lifetime. I sometimes think the Government and the Automakers ought to be tried together, and then hung. But that is a tirade for another time.

I heard the current President on the news today talking about maybe having an energy plan later this year.

George left American Motors in 1961, and ran for Governor, beating the incumbent, and served three terms of pretty good service. But there was something more that beckoned. He thought he could be a pretty good president, too.

He was a contender. He went to Vietnam on a fact-finding trip to beef up his knowledge on the War, and bolster his foreign policy credentials. He had initially supported the war, but after the trip he thought the military and the State Department people had sold him a bills of goods. He told TV interviewer Lou Gordon that he had been subjected to “brainwashing,” and so had the American people.

It was the equivalent of the Howard Dean Scream at the time, and he dropped his candidacy before the New Hampshire Primary was even held.

I’m not sure that is when I stopped trusting politicians and the press, but it is as good a point as any. He and his beautiful wife Lenore had 23 grandchildren; and 33 great-grandchildren when they passed away. I saw him the last time at a Rambler Rally in Pennsylvania in 1994 when he was campaigning for one of his daughters. He looked great, still strong, still with his hair swept straight back.

Lenore looked frail, though, as if the wind could blow her away. They were both gone the next year.

George’s son Mitt was on the rostrum yesterday. He is the man of he Statehouse now. For a conference dedicated to Research and Development, it started out with a rock-star quality.  The auditorium of the Boston World Trade Center was packed to overflowing as the media-star leader outlined his concerned and vision for Homeland Security.

He said when the Feds went to Orange Alert, and warned him of a threat to bridges, he asked his people how many of them he had in the state. An advisor told him around 3,000, or something more than he had State Troopers to protect them. He was not sure what a Trooper was going to do about a Ryder Truck, anyway.

He turned to the crowd and asked rhetorically, “Is he supposed to issue the driver a ticket?”

The crowd went wild. He said we need better intelligence about what is in the truck, and what exaclty the threat is. To do so, he has established a State Intelligence fusion center to collate all possible leads coming from Massachusetts law enforcement entities.

He was folksy and sharp and he has George’s good looks, and a little bit of his candor, though not as much as the Old Man.

There was no way I was going to get close enough to talk to him, and the times being what they are, I wasn’t going to try to have a private word without security vetting the encounter.

I would have to settle for lunch with his Deputy. But I think that his words are exactly what he would tell Mitt to say.

We are part of a little industry group that has access to some movers-and-shakers in the Government homeland security sector. We treat them to lunch, all within the ethics rules, and in turn they tell us the party line about what is going on.

It’s a synergy thing. We need them, but the Government can no longer fend for itself in the high-tech world, and so they need us to solve problems. This was the first time that we had attempted a luncheon with an official at the State level.

The luncheon was held at The Federalist Restaurant on Beacon Street. We were in the basement, extremely private, in a chamber with whitewashed vaulted ceilings. There was a long table, and hundreds of bottles of vintage wine in wire racks along the walls. The original foundation stone of the building is left exposed in the wall next to the bar, with the date “1722” deeply inscribed in the grey granite.

The restaurant is around the corner from the Grainery burying ground, where three signers of the Declaration of Independence are interred, along with victims of The Boston Massacre, a British military riot against separatist citizens of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that killed five men. It was a major turning point on the road to Revolution.

Mitt Romney appointed the Secretary in January of 2003 as part of an effort to create a meritocracy in the State government. I understand that is unusual in Massichusetts. His credentials are impeccable from law enforcement, and he got some great ink in the 9/11 attacks.

He is trim and outgoing and well spoken. He has a Christian Brothers education, from high school through college, and his degree in History has given him a unique perspective on how and why things work as they do. He had some great quotes, and had obviously been to lunch before. Unfortunately, the remarks were off the record or I would tell you.

They were pretty impressive, and included a lot of simple things that would really help. Sorry.

I don’t think the menu is embargoed, though.

It offered a delicate lobster bisque, with an option for a salmon course, or a beef tenderloin Wellington, with Hudson Valley foie gras atop a slice of Portobello mushroom with caramelized onions, accompanied by a tower of mashed potatoes with a dollop of thyme Madeira sauce, speared at the top with a single pan-fired potato chip. That was the Secretary’s choice, though he did not have much time to enjoy it, given the pace of his remarks.

Concluding the meal, which sadly was wine-less, given the backdrop, was the Federalist chocolate cake, a perfect hemisphere of dark chocolate with an intriguing shining character concealing a chocolate-almond cream-crunch, accompanied by artistic drops of raspberry mousse and an artful spoon of hazelnut ice cream.

The presentation was magnificent, and the service was unobtrusive but efficient.

I can tell you that he finished his remarks by saying that some of the State officials were actually almost as smart as the ones at the National Level. He was being only a little ironic. He said that the only time he had seen people of his level of authority at meetings were at ones that they had called themselves. He had never seen his peers at a meeting called by DHS.

In a war on terror that is profoundly local, I think it is appropriate to listen more closely to the people who will be first on the scene.

I think the Secretary is one of them. If I wasn’t afraid he was going to wind up running for President some day, I’d tell you who he was. You have to watch who you are being candid with.

I wish George Romney had remembered that. Maybe gas wouldn’t cost $2.50 and gallon.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.VicSocotra.Com

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