The Boston Globe this week made a big fuss over our Congressman Mike Capuano’s $24,000 spent on congressional travel to foreign nations during the past few years.
The inference, if one was to be drawn, is that Capuano, now seeking Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, has been profligate in spending government money during foreign travels.
The charges are ludicrous – as has been the Globe’s coverage of Capuano’s campaign.
The Globe wants Attorney General Martha Coakley to be Senator Martha Coakley.
In its arrogance, the Globe is again trying to crown the new senator so it can please itself being a kingmaker.
What the Globe won’t write about is how the attorney general has been campaigning for higher office for longer than a year.
Nearly everywhere Coakley has appeared during the past year she has been preceded by a very expensive entourage of her highly paid state functionaries who, in reality, have been campaigning for her.
All is fair in love and war – and this senate campaign is more about war than it is about love.
Capuano voted against the Iraq War.
He knows something about foreign policy.
He has traveled to Iraq and the Middle East and to Europe while Attorney General Coakley has made the rounds in Springfield, Worcester, Lowell, et cetera, with her sizable staff always tagging along.
No one at the Globe will be adding up the cost of the attorney general’s run during the past year of campaigning.
What they are adding up is Capuano’s travel costs – which don’t add up to a new Ford Fusion with a sunroof.
Capuano has been smart to attack Coakley and to separate himself from the pack that is running for Kennedy’s senate seat.
The Globe isn’t with him.
Capuano is running on his own – the way he likes it.