Some party-poopers have recently begun carping on about the main plank in Deval Patrick's campaign platform: an unquestioned belief—indeed, a sacrosanct assumption—in the candidate's cuddliness.  I ask you, can Candidate Deval even be understood without this fundamental assumption?  Could there be any other kind of Candidate Deval than a cuddly one?  Could the unstoppable Snuggle-juggernaut that is "Together We Can" have been fronted by a sardonic Kerry Healey or a sarcastic Christy Mihos or a desperate Grace Ross? 

What you've got to remember, people, is that in political campaigns everything is relative.  As everybody knows, in the best of elections, we vote as much against the other guy (or guys, or gays, or whatever) as we do for our guy.  The fact is, compared to any of his opponents Deval Patrick is not just a little snuggly, he might as well be Snuggles himself.  Together weeeeeeeee-hee-heeee! can!

But it's good to be a bit skeptical.  Politics is theater, it's true, but it's not the kind of theater you want to suspend your disbelief for.  Not entirely, at least.  And not for long.  It's the true believers who are going to suffer something awful under Deval.  The over-earnest savior-seeking types who put their faith in campaign slogans.  They'll be the wounded ones when practical considerations enter into the equation.   

Recently Nat Jacobson over at Channel 5 interviewed Deval and his wife at home.  She asked Mrs. Deval what was something people didn't know about her hubby.  The Missus replied, "he's got a wicked sense of humor." 

It was a telling—and I'm sure very apt—way to say it. 

Wicked. 

All the sudden I started thinking of Deval in a new light—in a flash he'd gone from a giggly little snuggle bear to a silky-voiced Eartha Kitt, stalking around the corner office, purring, "I want to be eeeeevil!"

Not that I didn't suspect it all along.  But we know how Massachusetts wants to BELIEVE, don't we?  You get caught up in the soaring rhetoric, the swelling music, the saccharine-sincere slogans, don't you?  Especially when the competition is so relentlessly uninspiring.  I know I do.

And while I don't think it bodes ill for Massachusetts, necessarily—I mean, an Eartha Kitt in Snuggles' clothing the Corner Office—I do think, as I said, that it will be hard on those who bought his campaign shtick.  Because the whole campaign is predicated on (the pretense of) sincerity.  Which is fine for those who understand that politics is theater, but rough on those looking for religion, who are seeking a savior in earnest.