In my professional life as a scientist, we spend a lot of research effort on phenomena known as “phase transitions.” The most interesting of them are ones which are sudden and irreversible- for example, if you’ve ever had the experience of superheated water from a microwave oven, where it looks placid, but a small disturbance causes it to violently boil, almost exploding, you know what I’m talking about.
There have been lots of excellent movies about politics- Wag The Dog, In The Loop, Primary Colors, The Candidate… but the one I think is the greatest of all time deals with a phase transition in a social sense. The Last Hurrah was made in the late 1950s as television was really taking hold in American culture. And it was extremely prescient in that it perfectly captured the moment of political phase transition. Old school politics was relentlessly retail- as with the principal character in this film, a city mayor would have a true and deep love for his city, know anybody who was anybody (and that did not exclusively mean “the rich and powerful”), spend all his time taking the pulse of every community, and almost exclusively focus on what we now call “constituent services.” Campaigning was in person: appearances at funerals, weddings, bar mitzvahs, pancake breakfasts, lodge meetings, everywhere the mayor could be seen. And everyone knew exactly who he was and had stories to tell about how he helped them personally.
In this movie, Spencer Tracy played Frank Skeffington (a thinly disguised version of Boston mayor James Curley), a true old-school politician, who clashed with the social elite (rather than counting on them for funding) and was familiar to the ordinary folks. The film follows him (through the eyes of his nephew) during his last campaign, which he runs exactly like all of his other previously successful campaigns. But there’s a new element, a phase transition about to happen. The city elite find a telegenic young man, inexperienced and without any real ideas or principles, a tabula rasa made for TV. He runs a campaign that’s an early version of a modern political campaign, TV-oriented, all about image and appearance, and well-funded by the old-line old-money elite who hated Skeffington. The only thing missing is Frank Lutz doing a focus group.
And of course, Skeffington loses. The phase transition is irreversible. We have suddenly transitioned to modern politics.
So beyond this being an excuse for me to urge all of you to see this movie, and maybe tell me I’m full of shit for calling it the greatest movie about politics ever made, I wanted to reminisce a bit about my favorite politician, someone very much of that era. Mimi Dipietro was a city councilman for 25 years in Baltimore, a product of lower-middle-class ethnic white East Baltimore, and while not exactly the articulate and smooth Frank Skeffington, he embodied the virtue of truly being one of the people.
“I know how to do my job. I do it honestly, sincerely and I help everybody who needs help. Yes, I got a big mouth, and if you got it coming to you, I’ll give it to you. But I’ll help you. That’s one thing. I’ll represent you, and I’ll try to help you. “
And that he did. Have a problem? Mimi will fix it. Potholes, weeds, zoning issues, permits, Mimi was on your side and ready to use his power and influence to get it fixed. Despite his conversational abilities in English, Italian, German, and Polish, his battles with the English language were legendary, and the English language usually lost.
“I would never tell a lie. If I have to lie to you, I’ll deviate from you.”
“I have been to half a dozen political affairs lately, and each time I get a standing evasion.”
“The criminal justice system suffers from too much flea bargaining.”
Asked about why Baltimore was a great city (right after the Mount St. Helens eruption): “’Cause we ain’t got no volcanoes.”
My favorite Mimi story has, to my knowledge, never been printed. I know about it because a friend of mine was a witness. My friend was visiting Mimi’s office during the winter, when two of his constituents came in with a problem. “Our apartment ain’t got the heat workin’ and the landlord ain’t fixin’ it.” Mimi immediately got the city inspector’s office and the city custodian on the phone. “I got a coupla niggers in here that ain’t got heat! Ya gotta fix this for ’em!”
My friend, stunned, said, “Mimi, you can’t use language like that!”
The two constituents replied, “That’s OK, that’s just how he talks, we don’t care, we just want the heat.”
And two hours later, a city crew was at their building and they got the heat.
