TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061890/0618107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 19

The Mouth of Massachusetts


John Silber has an awesome vocabulary, a tireless tongue and
plenty of bile. The combination could make him Governor

By SAM ALLIS


    Boston Globe political cartoonist Paul Szep calls him the
Andrew Dice Clay of Massachusetts politics. Columnist George
Will says he is the most interesting candidate in America this
year. The specter of the 63-year-old bantam president of Boston
University occupying the Governor's office terrifies many Bay
State residents. But it exhilarates others, who believe a
humorless political outsider performing triage on moribund
state government can restore it to fiscal health. Either way,
John Silber, who on June 2 ensured his place on the ballot for
Massachusetts' September primary, makes incredible theater.

    Silber has evolved from a political asterisk to serious
contender in five short months by becoming a channel for rage
and frustration against bureaucracy in general and the fiscally
disastrous administration of Michael Dukakis in particular. He
capped his uphill fight by narrowly corralling the necessary
15% of delegates at a chaotic Democratic state convention. For
that feat, Silber drew at least as much attention as former
state attorney general Francis X. Bellotti got for finishing
first.

    Now Bellotti and lieutenant governor Evelyn Murphy, the
third surviving candidate, will train their guns on Silber,
whom they fear for his brains, bile and ability to dominate the
news. Says pollster Gerry Chervinsky: "If he gets going on
substance, Silber is going to win." He would be a formidable
general-election candidate whose stern morality could draw
Reagan Democrats back to the party and attract liberal
Republicans.

    Silber has come this far by saying whatever is on his mind.
He bills himself as the ultimate political outsider at a time
when insiders are as popular as cockroaches. The state is in
a fiscal mess because of people like Bellotti and Murphy, he
argues, and it needs him to slash about $1 billion in fat,
reform the education system, create prison schools at abandoned
military bases and add 12 cents per gal. to the state gasoline
tax to trigger new jobs through business activity and tourism.

    Silber's voice resonates in part because he has no political
filter. He moves through life like a heat-seeking missile,
careering from one trajectory to another as new targets appear
on his screen. He believes in absolutes. He abhors moral
relativism and what others call "values." "A person who
believes in having sexual relationships with children has
values," he snaps in a clipped Texas baritone. "He puts a high
value on pedophilia."

    Such flipness has resulted in "a 24-hour stakeout on John
Silber's mouth," in the words of media analyst Ralph Whitehead.
The watch often pays off. Who else calls the Boston School
Committee "otiose" or academic opponents "pismires" (derived
from a Scandinavian term for urinating ants)? During his
campaign, Silber declared that a person can live with alcohol
abuse and still achieve at a high level, likened the oratory
technique of Jesse Jackson to that of Adolf Hitler and asserted
that "the racism of Jews is quite phenomenal." He told
reporters early in the campaign, "I know as a candidate I should
kiss your ass, but I haven't learned to do that with
equanimity yet."

    Silber has toned down his rhetoric since then, but he
remains as addicted to controversy as a moth is to a porch
light. Last month he suggested that funds for teenage welfare
mothers who have more than one child be cut off. He enraged the
party establishment by comparing the 15% convention threshold
to the exclusionary tactics Southern white supremacists used
to keep blacks out of politics.

    Even most of his critics concede that Silber's 19-year
tenure at Boston University has produced a clear improvement
in the institution, both academically and financially. But his
combativeness has left the university in a state of "enervative
calm" because, says one professor, "people are too tired to
fight anymore." Silber handles the university's board "like
Stalin worked the Politburo," in the words of one faculty
member. He has reduced faculty and students to tears with his
explosive temper and bruising classroom behavior. During the
1970s he dismissed undergraduates who published a student
newspaper called bu exposure as "short-pants communists."

    Armchair psychologists speculate that Silber's ballistic
streaks are compensation for being born with a deformed right
arm. But his brother Paul says, "The only thing John couldn't
do growing up was pick his nose with his right hand. He never
knew he was handicapped. He just knew he was different." As a
boy in San Antonio, Silber concluded it was best to attack
early in a fight, a strategy that has been an article of faith
ever since. "He learned that if he had to fight, it was best
for him to land the first blow," recalls Paul. "If he couldn't
whip a man with one arm, he'd figure out how to hit him harder,
and that's what he did."

    Silber graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio,
received his doctorate from Yale and maintained a mercurial
profile as a philosophy professor and later as dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas. He
almost succeeded Terrel Bell as Secretary of Education under
Reagan, a job he craved, but lost out to his friend William
Bennett.

    Ronnie Dugger, publisher of the liberal Texas Observer, says
the U.S. needs more John Silbers, flaws and all. "What we have
here is a valuable citizen," he says, because of Silber's
energy and commitment. No way, counters James H. Sledd, a
former English professor at the University of Texas who taught
under Silber. "We don't need any more people who know they're
right. They are the most dangerous people going." Both men have
a point.