HIS NAME IS FOX BUT HE WILL BE A WOLF

The Italian Governor of Massachusetts

The governor[1] was punctual for the interview and he stayed longer than he had originally scheduled for the interview, a sign that he was interested in my questions and was enjoying answering them. He only refused to answer one of them. Later, I will explain why.

In a large, white square room the governor was sitting with a portrait of President Dwight Eisenhower[2] behind him. He is a Republican. His secretary’s last name is Ghibelline [sic]. When I asked if she knew what that meant, she blushed and said yes, but since I am a professor and I am entitled to show off, I went on to provide a lengthier explanation. The waiting room is open to the public and accessible through an unmanned elevator. A police officer with a white shirt standing if front of the building gave me directions to the floor and the room number. No one stood on ceremonies. In the waiting room there were two couches, a couple of chairs, the secretary’s table, three gentlemen who were talking in hushed tones and two women sitting quietly on a couch. From the wall the portraits of former governors were looking down on us: Tobin, Allen, Bradford[3]. In a few years John Volpe will join them. The electorate chose him because he is a wolf (not a fox[4]) who promised to scare off the corrupt who have dominated after the solemn; boring but honest Yankees had disappeared from the political scene replaced by the cheerful and dishonest Irish. (Not all of them are, of course, but so many that Boston has become the standard background for novels and academic studies on corruption in major American cities.)

My first question was: “In your opinion, what is the major contribution made by Italians to the United States?” I came up with this question because in the course of colonial banquets,[5] the cliché of Italians’ contribution is always present. My impression is that the issue is always handled with great exaggerations, maybe due to the banquets’ communicative warmth and also as a result of the combination of two national rhetorical standards of excess: the Italian and the American. In certain occasions I reacted to the rhetoric saying: “If I may, why don’t you talk about the contribution that the United States has made to Italian immigrants, helping them up the economic ladder and giving their children a free education, the kind of education that their parents and grandparents never received?” The governor answered: “In the initial phase of Italian immigration the contribution was primarily in the form of sweat and hard labor. Most of them were poor and uneducated and their main concern was to provide sustenance to their families and give their children the basic education they lacked. Their devotion to family life was exemplary, dominated by the attachment to their faith and with of so many examples of honesty and decency. In those years the contribution was smaller than what the size of the population could have given. But in the recent years things have changed. Italians have come of age; they participate in the political and cultural life and have achieved prominence in the arts and music. Many second generation Italian Americans have positions in the sciences, many are engineers and a large number—women as well as men—are in the medical profession. Others in the legal field have given America outstanding lawyers and judges, worthy of those from the ancient university of Bologna[6]…”

This answer was both sober and realistic with a distinction between the first extraordinary efforts of the poor immigrants, primarily focused on giving a leg up to their children, and the following efforts of the new generations with their diplomas. I liked it. The governor, however, skipped my second question. “Which is stronger among immigrants: the bond with the Catholic Church or that with their country of origin?” It was a provocative question and of course I knew it was. But I didn’t want to limit myself to questions that would only provide the opportunity to open the faucets of clichés. A press secretary had already warned me that the governor probably would not answer because “it wasn’t sufficiently clear.” I remarked that I do have a lot of faults but lack of clarity is not one of them. If anything, I have a reputation for being even too clear, so clear in fact that sometimes people get offended. The secretary was a bit of a hypocrite for he knew very well what I wanted to know. In any case, I have already come to my own personal conclusions on this: I have always maintained that Italian immigrants in American were helped much more by the Church than by the [Italian] state, more by priests than by consuls. I am referring here to the first period of immigration, the oceanic current that ripped away from the Italian nation the living and the dead, the healthy and the rotten, the honest and the criminal. Although the immigrants did not have an education, their religious culture was superior to their civic culture. The governor realized he had to provide an explanation for his reluctance. He told me what I already knew: that in America religious issues are not to be discussed and everybody must accept the premise that all individuals are equal, regardless of their faith... This was not a real answer but it revealed his abeyance to this American taboo, necessary to ensure that so many peoples from all corners of the globe, with different ideas and faiths, can live together.

My third question was: “You have been elected with a personal vote and as a protest against the general corruption of the public administration. Now, what will you be able to accomplish, and what do you intend to do?” Here the governor was on friendly ground. It was the kind of question he would get from one of his voters. He acknowledged that there was little he could do, but that he would try hard nevertheless, with diligence and conviction. How would he do it? The readers should know that John Volpe’s victory was personal and not a victory of the Republican Party. Boston has a majority of registered Democrats and is the incubator where President Kennedy grew up. Volpe won because of his charisma and because he is a new face in politics, despite his long activity in Republican circles. “Vote for the Man” was his campaign slogan. In American politics there is always a substantial group of independent voters who end up deciding the outcome of elections, often switching from one party to the other. Moreover, in every party there are voters who, regardless of their registration, often ignore affiliation and follow other principles. It is likely that in the case of Volpe a few hundred thousand voters of Italian origin officially registered as Democrats chose to vote for the Republican candidate. After all, he is Italian and he has charisma. While I usually do not have much feeling for politicos, this time I felt an attraction for this abruzzese,[7] not particularly tall but solid and similar to the Roman soldiers carved on Trajan’s Column.[8] Apparently he blames his stature on the fact that as a child he used to carry a còfano[9] on his head, as in the past both men and women in Abruzzi used to. The women acquired from this practice a solemn and statuary posture and sometimes I still see examples of it in older women in the streets of Little Italy. Men became stocky with powerful backs and shoulders.

“What can I do?” he continued. “Not much. First of all, I promised to myself that I will give an example as a person who does not use political power for his own personal interest, but governs in the interest of the people. I hope this example will inspire others to do the same. I would also like to inspire a sense of responsibility among public employees who are paid by the people to serve the people. I will try to eliminate waste and spend public money with caution. I requested that all the administrators abide by a code of ethics. I pushed for tough rules: I didn’t get everything I wanted, but at least we made some progress. Just look at what kind of position I find myself in. I am the only politician from my party to get elected [to a state-wide position]. Everybody else, literally every single one of them, is from the other party, the party that I consider responsible for the corruption I want to fight. How can I get them to go along with condemning the state of affairs they are responsible for?”

With these words I took leave of the governor and I am also going to take leave of the readers. The issue is important and it deserves to be discussed. Boston, which once upon a time was the center of Puritan morality, has become one of the worst venues of state and municipal corruption. How did this happen? And how is it possible that the voters’ protest elected to the helm of state an honest man like Volpe while at the same time surrounding him with a lieutenant governor, a senate, a house and elected magistrates who belong to; and were put in power by; the very political groups responsible for the corruption?

Boston, July 5, 1961

P.S. Unfortunately, Volpe was defeated for a few votes in the 1962 election.[10]