There was a time when the crowd running Maine government wasn’t entirely composed of wingnuts, egomaniacs and dunderheads. In that not-so-distant past, the folks in charge were neither starry-eyed idealists nor mouth-frothing reformers. They were practical and only as ideologically rigid as they had to be to negotiate a reasonable compromise. They’d run for elected office because they believed they had an obligation to perform public service.
This quaint notion of politics was called noblesse oblige, derived from the French for “lots of time on their hands.” Its guiding principle was the antiquated idea that people born to privilege had a responsibility to help those less fortunate. Its proponents believed in respectful behavior, intelligent debate and bargaining to find solutions rather than winners.
In our egalitarian era, this philosophy of governing has fallen from favor, but it still lingered at the State House in 1978, when Joe Brannigan arrived in Augusta.
At first glance, there was little to indicate Brannigan, who had just been elected to the state House of Representatives as a Democrat from Portland, would find much in common with the elitists who ran the Legislature. They were mostly wealthy Republicans from northern Maine, following a family tradition of taking time away from their land-holdings, banks and railroads to instruct the masses in what was best for them. Even the Democratic leadership of that era accepted the idea that governance should be left to those genetically predisposed to handle it.
Brannigan was different. He never gave the impression he was fulfilling an obligation to help the poor. In him, that feeling was innate. The Topsham native served in the Navy during the Korean War, entered the seminary, and spent a decade as a Catholic priest, eventually being assigned to the unenviable task of providing spiritual counseling to college students in Portland. There he demonstrated patience and a high tolerance for futility, valuable traits for a future legislator.
After leaving the church in search of more concrete ways to help those in need, he went to work for Shalom House, a social service agency providing housing to people with mental illnesses, and soon took over as its executive director. He ran for the Legislature because he became convinced the incumbent Democrat in his newly drawn district was out of touch with his constituents.
Brannigan was an unabashed liberal, but one with a strong streak of practicality. It was that trait that brought him to the attention of the Lords of the Legislature. He stood out in a Portland delegation filled with left-wing rabble-rousers, often more interested in agitating than governing. He was soft-spoken, but firm. He could be trusted to stand by agreements he made. He understood how to negotiate deals everybody could live with, even if nobody much liked them.
Brannigan wasn’t part of the Old Guard, most of which crumbled into dust soon after he arrived, replaced by leadership on both sides of the aisle that was more partisan and less polite. But he admired the nobility’s inclination to set self-interest aside and get the job done. He fought hard for his constituencies, but never lost sight of the ultimate objective, which was to govern in a sensible fashion. The results of his efforts were budgets that kept the social safety net strong while respecting the taxpayers who had to foot the bill.
That doesn’t mean Brannigan avoided taking risks. In his 28 years in the Legislature, he rarely hesitated to act when he saw something wrong. In the early ‘90s, as the sleaze factor surrounding Democratic leadership increased, he took the ill-advised step of challenging Senate President Charlie Pray in a caucus election. Pray squashed him like a bug and stripped him of his post as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee.
“It felt like the right thing to do at the time,” Brannigan told me a few days after his downfall. “And it still does.”
He wasn’t without ambition. He once considered a run for Congress, but dropped the idea when another candidate with a similar platform entered the race, seeing no point in diluting the pool of supporters. He campaigned hard during the administration of independent Gov. Angus King for the job of commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse (since merged into the Department of Health and Human Services), but was passed over, perhaps because, in King’s approach to social services, practicality wasn’t a highly regarded trait.
There’s no doubt Brannigan, in his long career, made Maine a better place. Not perfect. Probably not even all that good. But better than it would have been without him.
As legacies go, the Old Guard would have been satisfied with that one.
Joe Brannigan died on Jan. 17 at the age of 83.
In the interest of full disclosure, I worked on Joe’s first campaign. In spite of that, he won. Comments may be emailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Thanks, Al, for the touching tribute. Joe Brannigan was a true public servant,
whether in office or as a “civilian”.
I learn something every day. I always thought that noblesse oblige meant: If you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, it’s always better to admit you were stealing cookies than to claim you were only checking the diameter of the opening. My mistake, although I think my former translation works better in current politics, at least since Bill Clinton.
You would do well to invest in a dictionary.
noblesse oblige:
the obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous (often used ironically)
duty, obligation, responsibility – the social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force; “we must instill a sense of duty in our children”; “every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty”
High rank aside (unless you’re a Clinton or Bush – or Obama?), if you take an opportunity to grab a cookie, you have the obligation to admit your deed without dissembling.
I wish we had him in office now