When I first approached the Hartford Business Journal about rescuing the publication with a really, really outstanding weekly column, I think I might have mentioned that I had worked at The New York Times. The HBJ folks were really impressed. I got the job, started writing the column, and the paper’s readership doubled.
What I meant to say was that I worked at The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle for hours at a time, because it is a very hard puzzle.
At some point, the Business Journal people figured out what had happened, but, as you can see, I’m still here. They decided to take a pass on tossing me out the door, sending thousands of readers out the door with me. Besides, I simply “misspoke.” That’s not the same as lying.
And so it is with Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal. Wildly popular in a Cohen kind of way, he was expecting to win the U.S. Senate election this fall without breaking a sweat. Then came the revelations about his occasional speeches in which he suggested that his military service included time in Vietnam, as opposed to cushy domestic postings “during” Vietnam.
What to do? Some of his fellow Democrats slapped him around a bit — but they didn’t really mean it. They want Dick to win the Senate race. As for the military veterans, the reaction was mixed, but most seemed to give Dick a pass, because he was always very good about coming to funerals and VFW barbecues and American Legion events.
The most difficult of these kinds of situations occurs when the sin is discovered long after it took place. History abounds with pleasant fellows who said discomforting things — when seen through modern eyes.
On the 75th anniversary of his sort-of-famous letter to the Jewish kids, imagine that the late James L. McConaughy was still alive and well and running for office in Connecticut. McConaughy, a prep school-Ivy League college kind of guy, was president of Wesleyan University for a time in the 1920s and 1930s, was lieutenant governor of Connecticut from 1939 to 1941, and served a brief stint a governor in 1947 and 1948.
A bit of an academic, wealthy Republican type, he was competent and popular and even tried to integrate the Connecticut National Guard — no mean trick back then.
So, what if McConaughy came back to life and tried to run for office today? Oops.
As president of Wesleyan, he wrote a letter to 12 pre-med students, suggesting that they might consider finding a different profession. The problem, he confided, was that there were too many Jews applying to medical schools and in the face of this flood of Jews, it was unlikely that many of them would be admitted.
McConaughy explained that he wasn’t an anti-Semite; he was just trying to be helpful. In the context of the 1930s, Jews heading for many different professions received similar advice — the most popular being to change their names to something “less Jewish.”
But imagine McConaughy holding a 2010 press conference and attempting to explain away what he had said.
Blumenthal “misspoke” on a number of occasions, but his explanation suggests he was merely careless. McConaughy? That would be a strange one. He meant what he said; no use pretending that he confused Jews with Presbyterians.
Today, McConaughy would have crafted a polished, heart-felt “apology,” even if he would be mystified about what he was apologizing for.
Blumenthal? His apologies and explanations have been clumsy and unconvincing. But he’s still in the race. Being the frontrunner helps cleanse the soul.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
