Buried in the middle of a short article on page 3 of section B of Tuesday’s Boston Globe are some quotes from a letter sent from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital by Boston Mayor Menino to Barack Obama and John Boehner. (Menino has been Mayor of Boston or many years and has recently been hospitalized for a few weeks.) The article starts out by saying that he was urging them to keep the country from going off the fiscal cliff and not to cut health spending.
When I read that, I figured this was another piece of mush. But for some reason I kept on reading. Here are the actual quotes:
“…tell us the truth, especially on taxes.
“Brian, my nurse, doesn’t come to my room in the morning to say, ‘Mayor, if you just sit here, unburdened by taxing exercises, free from our rehab rules and regulations, you will get stronger.’ He tells it like it is. You can, too.
“…tell those who can do more, to do more. In a hospital, it gets real clear real fast about what real fortune is. We need more ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ and less, dare I say, ‘I built that.’”
Mayor Menino, although a fundamentally decent person, has often been a disappointment as a leader. But on this one he nailed it. I wish we had more political leaders who would talk this way. This should have been the front page lead.