Our Race

The tradition of the Boston Marathon will forever trump a simple act of terror

Growing up just North of Boston there were few days I cherished more than Patriot's Day, or as New England runners know it, "Marathon Monday". Patriot's Day is a uniquely New England experience and as a young Massachusetts runner it was a day I always looked forward to - both to watch the marathon I one day hoped to compete in but also to take in the traditional 11am Patriot’s Day ballgame.

My love affair with running began at an early age and was largely driven by my obsession with the Boston Marathon and its history. A family friend who was a longtime runner took me under his wing and motivated me to take up the sport myself. I started running road races when I was ten years old and continue to this day, largely because of my respect for the marathon, a respect that was cultivated throughout my childhood and as a byproduct of the culture of running that existed around the marathon in New England.

I remember  attending the marathon expo as a young budding runner and collecting autographed action shots of Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit-Samuelson, Uta Pippig, and, of course, the great Johnny Kelley. I remember competing in the Heartbreak Hill youth one-miler and imagining the history of the race as I did my best to attack the historic stretch of the marathon. But most of all I remember how much the race meant to me then and still does to this day. It is quintessential Boston, quintessential New England, and we love it for that and so much more.

The people of Boston and Massachusetts are an extraordinarily proud people. We are extremely loyal to our state and our favorite city, to such an extent that at times the rest of you hate us for it (don’t lie, you know it’s true). We take great pride in our home and all that it has to offer – its rich history of revolution, the traditions of the sports teams we cheer for as if they are family, and the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the world that is a rite of spring for New England.  

That is why we were so saddened to see Monday’s tragedy unfold. Like so many other cities and communities that have and do endure hardship, we are shaken not just to see our city come under attack but also to see it happen during our most prized tradition. No matter what emerges over the coming days I can assure you this much is true: regardless of what those who perpetrated this attack aimed to accomplish, The Boston Marathon is not and never will be a story of terror. Its history is too rich and its tradition too strong. The Boston Marathon is a story of perseverance and nothing will ever change that.  

It’s the story of Johnny Kelley, who won the marathon in both 1935 and 1945, but is best known for running the jaunt from Hopkinton to Boston a record 61 times. For decades there was no more iconic image of the race than Johnny Kelley crossing the finish line after having smiled through another 26.2 miles. "I'm afraid to stop running”, Kelley said at the spry age of 70, “I feel too good. I want to stay alive”. Kelley ran Boston for the last time in 1992 and passed away in 2004. There were few people who inspired me more to become a runner than him. I still draw inspiration from his story and his life and I imagine many other runners do as well.

It’s also the story of Dick and Rick Hoyt, an inspiring father-son team that to Bostonians are synonymous with the marathon. Dick Hoyt, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Air National Guard, has competed in more than a thousand endurance events over the past few decades. What makes Dick particularly special, though, is that he has completed every one of those events with his quadriplegic son, Rick, who suffers from cerebral palsy. The image of Dick Hoyt pushing his son Rick in his wheelchair year after year is another of those inspiring iconic images of the marathon that so many throughout New England draw energy from. Tragically, the Hoyts were stopped about a mile short of the finish line on Monday, but you can rest assured they will be back next year.

A statue of the Hoyts stands in Hopkinton near the marathon’s starting line and one of Kelley near near city hall in Newton. They are icons and symbols that the people of Boston and Massachusetts draw inspiration from. The Boston Marathon is their story and the story of so many others who inspire us as they overcome their respective challenges to compete in the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon. Just as much as Boston is the prize the world’s elite distance runners covet, it is a story of the perseverance of ordinary people. It’s not who will don the wreath at the end of the race that we follow most closely each year, but the inspirational stories of so many amazing people who compete year in and year out.

It is because of this rich tradition that the Boston Marathon will never be a story of terror. It will always be a story of perseverance. We are too stubborn to have it any other way. It will take much more to shake the resolve of this city and these people than a simple act of terror. It will take much more to tarnish the history and tradition of the marathon that we hold so dear. Next year, we will run and we will cheer. We will raise money for myriad causes and we will shed tears of joy as we accomplish our feats and as we watch those we love accomplish theirs. You will never take our tradition away from us. You will never take our race away from us. And you will certainly never take our pride. You have only strengthened our resolve. We are the Boston Marathon and we will persevere.

 

Why the GOP field should stay the course -- and why their leadership should encourage them

With former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney having won the Iowa caucuses by a historically close margin and holding a seemingly insurmountable lead in the upcoming New Hampshire primary, he’d like you and his competitors to believe he’s sitting pretty as the inevitable nominee. Conventional wisdom says the longer the rest of the GOP field continues to challenge Romney, the more damage it will do to the eventual nominee, right? Not so fast. The reality is quite the contrary.

We’ve seen the inevitability message hammered home before. In 1972, Ed Musky was as inevitable as –candidates come only to be defeated by a ruthless Nixon political machine and an energized George McGovern. In 2008, I had the pleasure of working on the delegate selection team for that cycle’s inevitable nominee. Then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s inevitability was unquestionable in the summer of 2007 and wasn’t shaken until her campaign was confronted by a harsh reality: the rules of the game.

In 2012, the rules are more important for the GOP nomination than ever before. In August, 2010, recognizing the value of a longer, more competitive nominating season, the Republican National Committee changed the rules that govern its state nominating contests to require any state that holds a nominating contest before April 1 to allocate its delegates on a proportional basis.

Say what you want about the GOP, but don’t doubt its electoral savvy. The GOP was smart to change its rules. In 2008, the Clinton and Obama campaigns competed in state after state with the conventional wisdom being that such infighting would hurt our eventual nominee’s chances of a November victory. This conventional wisdom could not have been farther from the truth. In state after state the campaigns built daunting field operations and flooded the airwaves with democratic messaging to the extent that in a number of key swing states, the McCain campaign was never able to viably compete. To its credit, the Republican leadership recognized the advantage of the protracted Democratic nominating process and the value in allowing a broader, more heterogeneous portion of the American electorate to participate in choosing the party’s nominee. There’s little doubt that GOP leadership is privately encouraging candidates to see the race out (look no further than the flip-flop from Texas Governor Rick Perry).

To the GOP establishment, this framework provides for the best of both worlds: the contest could remain reasonably competitive up until April 1, but if their candidates were still contesting contests at that point, the winner-take-all nature of the remaining contests would enable GOP leadership to exert enough influence to bring the contest to a quick conclusion.

In considering their current political standing, the GOP field should remember the importance of the rules of the game and the historic failure of the inevitability message, and stay the course. The RNC changed its delegate selection rules to draw the primary campaign out longer, not to shorten it. Abandoning the winner-take-all unit rule in favor of proportionally distributing delegates makes wins less important, the actual percentages the candidates garner more important, and the delegate count inevitably closer. The GOP field would be well served to recognize that at this stage of the game it’s still anybody’s race. Whereas before a few close wins could quickly propel a Republican candidate to a large delegate lead, now the magnitude of such wins is extremely important.

The only thing inevitable about Mitt Romney at this stage is his front-runner status. The clear expectation is that Governor Romney will win New Hampshire, but what about the contests just beyond New Hampshire? Polling in South Carolina and Florida has shown no consistency and if Romney falters in one of these contests it will almost ensure he won’t be the only Republican standing on March 6, Super Tuesday, when ten states will hold nominating contests.

Anybody but Mitt?

In addition, GOP voters seem eager to nominate anybody but Mitt, and the smart candidates (hold the laughter) recognize that the longer they maintain their viability, the more likely they are to garner the votes of those candidates who do decide to drop out (congratulations, Senator Santorum!). Romney’s support has been largely static throughout the campaign thus far and there are few indicators that suggest it will increase while alternative candidates remain in the race. The polling from both South Carolina and Florida is sporadic at best and indicates that the contests in those states are wide open. Perhaps that’s why the only real path to a Romney nomination is one where he tries to divide and conquer the field.

Considering all these factors, the last thing Romney’s competitors should do is drop out early. While conventional wisdom (and hard numbers, admittedly) says that Romney has the financial wherewithal to outlast his opponents, these competitors would be well served to test that wisdom against the apparent hesitance Republican voters have with their presumptive nominee. With new rules that will keep the delegate race close, voter apathy with the presumptive nominee, and seemingly wide open races in major early states such as South Carolina and Florida, the GOP field shouldn’t flee to the exits prematurely. Not only could their resolve reasonably lead to an alternative to Romney emerging as the front runner, but it’s also exactly what their party wanted them to do when it decided to change the rules of the game.