Slavitt’s Memoir Mired in the “Blue State Blues”

If Cambridge natives think Harvard students are pretentious, it’s no wonder they had such a bad reaction to David. R. Slavitt.

“Blue State Blues,” a political memoir of Slavitt’s failed bid to represent Cambridge in the State House, paints a picture of an arrogant blowhard with a breathtaking contempt for voters and public policy.

From the start, Slavitt makes clear he has little regard for anyone. His recounting of a campaign event where he was accompanied by a Crimson reporter, for example, is a typical show of his pomposity.

“These sordid confrontations with reality are exotic to Harvard students, the kind of thing that they don’t know and only rarely imagine,” muses Slavitt, a Yale graduate. “Much of the purpose of going to places like Harvard and Yale is to obviate the need for such vulgar encounters.”

You’d think these words describe begging for campaign money or being glad-handed by slick, Beacon Hill politicians. In fact, they describe Slavitt standing in front of a market and introducing himself to voters.

And this is a key problem throughout the book: Slavitt regards candidate-to-voter contact—the core of our political culture—as “sordid” and “vulgar.”

Slavitt’s snobbery emerges again in his contempt for those without “elite” education when he supposes that his own intelligence might make him a weaker candidate. “[A]s [State Rep. Timothy J.] Toomey is almost certainly less intelligent than I am,” Slavitt speculates, “he has the advantage, because his mind is much less likely than mine to skitter off in all directions.”

Slavitt harps on the fact that his opponent went to Suffolk University instead of an Ivy League school. He neglects, of course, to mention that one of the Commonwealth’s most talented congressmen, Marty Meehan, also attended Suffolk. A candidate who stakes his intelligence on his bachelor’s degree might want to know this.

This might be tolerable if Slavitt were at least consistent in his pretension. But just pages before declaring that the purpose of attending an elite university is to escape personal interaction, Slavitt points to State Sen. Jarrett T. Barrios ’91 as someone who has mastered the niceties of campaigning. (He does, to his "credit," fail to mention that many other Harvard alumni have found success as politicians in Cambridge; Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72 and City Councilor Brian P. Murphy ’86 are just two examples.)

All this leads up to the other key problem with “Blue State Blues”—Slavitt doesn’t even come close to earning the right to say he “challenges the status quo” of his new profession.

Politics is lamentable for many reasons: Government is seen as an industry, not a calling. Stunts win out over serious policy considerations. The media and electorate are more interested in sound-bytes than nuanced debates.

Slavitt’s candidacy rises above none of these shortcomings.

He offers no real reason for wanting to serve; he certainly shows no Kennedyesque call to office, originally thinking of running to generate press for his son’s candidacy for attorney general. He also displays an affinity for cynical gimmickry, asking the governor to appoint him to a commission in order to bolster his government bona fides.

Instead of noble motivations, he offers supremely ridiculous political proposals. He reveals that he only has thoughts on education policy, and his chief proposal is that every eight-year-old be granted a master’s degree—while still eight years old. This would force most schools to close, he says, and leave a small minority of students actually interested in learning. How exactly giving everyone a master’s degree would force most schools to close—and, more importantly, why that would be beneficial—are, to put it charitably, left unexplained.

Slavitt seems to think that if he pays lip service to his contempt for the political system—even as he succumbs to its vices—he’ll seem witty or clever. He declares, with no shortage of chutzpah, that people treat politics “as if it were some kind of game.” Well, politics is a game—one that Slavitt sneers at, one he tries to play, and one that, satisfyingly, plays him.

Slavitt’s memoir shows that he still doesn’t realize why he failed as a candidate. It’s not because politics is perverted, or because Cantabridgians are dumb. It’s because he, the candidate, didn’t take the election seriously.

“Should he be elected, Slavitt sees his role on Beacon Hill primarily as that of a gadfly and an obstructionist,” reads his campaign announcement. “If the legislature cannot serve the will of the people, he believes, it ought at least to be more amusing and entertaining.”

His book is neither. It’s a “vulgar encounter” that readers would do well to avoid.

—Reviewer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.