The Mouth of Massachusetts

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.