No Tragic Hero

LATELY THE NEWSPAPERS have been full of reports of major-league screw-ups I'm not talking about baseball. I'm talking about that great tradition which F. Scott Fitzgerald crystallized in The Great Gatsby pushing things to the limit, taking enormous risks, and screwing up.

The most notable recent screw-up was Rep Ed Markey's decision to quit the Massachusetts senate race. But it was a poor screw-up, tarnish on a shining tradition.

They used to call it dying in action Dying with your boots on. Or your gloves, depending on the profession. It's the sort of tradition that inspires cultural monoliths like the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and, in a different sense, Easy Rider. In Butch Cassidy they really did screw up--Paul Newman and Robert Redford should have known not to rob that bank in the end. But they didn't really have a choice. The alternative was to loll around some more in that town in Bolivia and argue about who was sleeping with Katharine Ross. In the face of that, a screw up be comes the noble choice. European culture doesn't have a tradition of screw-ups, probably because when things have gone wrong in the twentieth century--namely, two world wars--Europe has got ten the short, sharp end of the stick. Screwing up has a different meaning for them (By the way, that's part of why they have a real peace movement and we have, oh, Dr Helen Caldicott, who writes books with titles like "Missile Envy." Bless her motives, though).

But that wasn't always the case Ancient Greek tragedy portrayed the definitive screw-up. There's no way you can argue that Oedipus, the father of screwing up if you're a Freudian, was responsible for what happened to him. The oracle said he would sleep with his mother and kill his father, so he did what any sensible person would do. He left town. Then he pushed that limit, took those risks, to become king. And Fate tripped him up. Just like Newman and Redford, or those test pilots who crash in flames early on in The Right Staff. But not just like Macbeth, the ultimate Elizabethan screw-up. Anybody who's taken a high school Shakespeare class knows that Macbeth brought on his own tragedy. True, Lady Macbeth was the impetus for that saying. "Behind every successful man is a strong woman," but Lord Macbeth would have done it without her. He was too damned ambitious. He didn't just test Fate, he set it rolling in the wrong direction.

Ed Markey isn't as eloquent as Macbeth, but when he ignominiously quit the senate race last week, he screwed up Elizabethan style, with nobody to blame but himself. That's why in the past week and a half the local press has done nothing but rain down moralistic criticism--swatting Markey's hand and swiping his but at every opportunity. "Markey's Retreat," is the title of this week's Phoenix meditation, in which Markey is condemned as a "suitor scorned--actually not even scorned, but merely afraid of being scorned..." The Boston Herald's headline let the survivors speak: "Candidates Blast 'Markey the Wimp.'" "Markey's meanderings," the Globe editorialized, revealed that he is not a "reflective person."

Well, yes, I agree with all this. Markey screwed up, and he screwed up in the wrong way. During his short campaign he talked a lot about how proud he was of the enemies he's made as an outspoken freeze-groupie liberal. But last week he probably earned more political enemies among his allies than he'll be able to count after another 10 years of pushing the freeze. And that's if he's reelected. "Put it this way," said political consultant Michael Goldman, who is working for one of the candidates running for Markey's congressional seat, "you won't find many people on Beacon Hill who want to hold a testimonial dinner for him."

More succinctly, one young campaign worker who has toiled in Markey campaigns for ten years, said quietly at last week's press conference, "Ed Malarkey, that's his new name."

BUT AMIDST all this justified condemnation, it's worthwhile to note a couple of sad things about Markey's exit things that seem to have been missed in the rush to bury a man who didn't know how to go about screwing up.

First of all, Markey was a very good candidate, and the weird thing was that he know it and mentioned it when he quit. He noted that he had raized the most money and had probably corralled the most delegates, but, he kept chanting, this was a "personal decision." Markey does deserve the criticism that he wears his greasy ambition on his sleeve, and that he is something of a political light-weight, but there's no denying that he has also done a fine job of shaking up the Washington establishment on the freeze issue. It was Markey's outsider, bad-boy manner that promised to inject some emotion into what so far has been a puling, punctilious campaign.

As it is, we're left with Lt. Gov John Kerry and Rep. Jim Shannon as the liberal front-runners. Either one would probably make fine senator; but Kerry has yet to really speak up and Shannon's quintessential insider reputation is a bit worrisome. Shannon actually lets it get around that he does things like share a late-night cigar with Rep. Danny Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rostenkowski, to say the least, is not your most devout liberal.

The 32-year-old Lawrence congressman has taken strong stands on Central America and certain health issues, but a recent pro-Shannon article in the Boston Observer was entitled "Mr Reasonable." Is Mr. Reasonable what we want in the Senate, if Mr. Irrationality is re-elected to the White House?

Markey did bring important issues into the campaign, and his prickly, slightly, obnoxious presence challenged the others to say something definite. Without him. Shannon is likely to emphasize his Washington experience, and Kerry to bank on statewide name recognition. Not too exciting Markey might not have made the best senator, but he raised an important issue as a standout in a field of nearly identical liberals--just what sort of leadership is each candidate going to provide? When Markey quit, the issue evaporated, and the campaign will be that much weaker for his absence.

YOU WOULDN'T THINK someone who played that position in a campaign--the tack on the other candidates' seats--would sneak out so cravenly. The latest assertion making its way through the Massachusetts political rumor mill is that Tip O'Neill, who supports Shannon, pressured Markey to quit. That seems out of character for Tip, but if Markey is re-elected and starts receiving favors from the high command, it might be worth redirecting our present scorn.

But for the moment, the tragedy is that Ed Markey missed a stellar chance to join the great American screw-up tradition (if he lost the senate race) or to agitate a glacially staid legislative body (if he won). Now that is sad.