STATE SENATOR Brian Joyce's campaign isn't going well. He'd hoped it would convince voters in the 9th Congressional District to send him to Washington. Instead it seems to have convinced a fair number of them that he is too consumed with ambition to be trusted.
 State Sen. Brian A. Joyce |
Yes, sometimes it is. And sometimes the written page all but shimmers with the sincerity of the person writing it.
Take, for example, the written page that Joyce submitted last summer to Massachusetts Citizens for Life. It's the page labeled "2000 Candidate Questionnaire," the one whose seven yes-or-no questions Joyce answered with seven vehement, almost exaggerated, check marks.
- 1. Do you believe that the law should protect the right to life of each human being from conception until natural death? YES.
- 2. Would you vote for a law banning the practice of partial-birth abortion . . .? YES.
- 3. Would you oppose the so-called 'buffer-zone' bill which would . . . criminalize leafleting and peaceful assembly on the Commonwealth's streets and sidewalks? YES.
And so on down the page, one enthusiastic check mark after another. Would Joyce require viability testing before abortion? YES. Would he oppose publicly funded abortions? YES. Keep euthanasia illegal? YES. Protect human embryos from harmful experimentation? YES.
Who could doubt the sincerity of a candidate answering that questionnaire with such gusto? Naturally Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorsed Joyce for re-election last November, just as it had endorsed him in previous years. Naturally its PAC donated money. Naturally its members believed he was a reliable advocate for their cause; many, in fact, had received a letter from him the last time he was in a tough primary, promising "to continue to be a strong prolife voice in the Massachusetts Senate."
And naturally all of them felt deceived when Joyce announced this spring — just 11 months after answering YES-YES-YES to every question on the MCFL questionnaire — that he would henceforth support the prochoice agenda.
What makes the whole episode so telling isn't Joyce's about-face. People do sometimes change their views, even on abortion. If Norma McCorvey — the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade — can work for a prolife ministry, Brian Joyce is entitled to decide he favors legal abortion after all.
But it is one thing to have a change of heart; it is something else to turn on your former allies. Joyce could have coupled his new political stance with sympathy for the pro-life voters he had previously wooed. Instead he indirectly mocked them, deriding his earlier position as something he had never really cared about.
"I've never before sought an office where my position really mattered," he told reporters — a curious claim from someone whose maiden speech in the Senate was in opposition to a bill curtailing prolife speech outside abortion clinics. His prolife views, he said, were merely baggage left over from 10 years of Catholic schooling — nothing a thinking person should have taken seriously.
To anyone who asked, the would-be congressman declared that he had been agonizing about abortion for three years, ever since a couple he knows aborted a severely deformed child. But it is hard to see much agony in his questionnaire responses last summer. Indeed, it is hard to find any evidence that Joyce was anything other than the staunch prolifer he held himself to be until this summer. "I'm never going to be extreme enough to satisfy either side's advocates," he says now. He certainly used to be.
This isn't the first time Joyce has reversed a firmly held position and then made a point of showing contempt for those who used to trust him. When he first ran for the Legislature, he sought and received the endorsement of Citizens for Limited Taxation. As a state representative, he sponsored CLT's bill to return the state income tax rate to 5 percent, and then used that issue to run for the state Senate.
"When others were faint of heart," his newspaper ads boasted, "one leader had the courage to fight the tax dragon." Below, he listed his accomplishments; the very first was "Sponsored legislation to lower State Income Tax from 5.95 percent to 5 percent."
Yet just four months after taking office, Joyce voted against the bill he had so unequivocally claimed to support. And once again, instead of showing consideration for his former allies in CLT, he gives them the back of his hand.
"You know what? I don't work for them," he sneers. "I couldn't give two hoots about what CLT has to say."
No wonder so many voters detest politics. Joyce isn't the only politician to give his word and then break it. He's not the first to betray his supporters. If only he were the last.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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