Greatest economic development official in literary history? Hank Morgan, of course ”“ or Sir Boss, to you.
Send a Connecticut Yankee middle-manager back in time to take over building a Middle Ages economy ”“ as Mark Twain envisioned it, King Arthur”™s England ”“ and just watch the fireworks fly.
Twain”™s Sir Boss gets started by blowing up his Merlin”™s tower ”“ and by extension, his reputation ”“ before moving on to some serious work on schools, infrastructure and court reform ”“ as in the royal court of the Round Table.
Knights errant ambling over the countryside to little avail? Slap some advertising on those shields and generate some sales!
King a little too aloof to the needs of the peasantry? Get him into the field, Undercover Boss-style!
As Sir Boss quickly learns, it is not enough to have “miracles” at your disposal, such as being able to engineer an eclipse. Timing and theatrics count, too ”“ sometimes you have to time your miracle to coincide with a lightning strike, and in unleashing an underground Artesian well that had gone dry, it doesn”™t hurt to let off a few Roman candles to accentuate the effect. It helps, of course, to have worked under the blue Colt dome emblazoned with gold stars in Hartford in learning how to do all that.
Under the gold Connecticut State Capitol dome, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has spent more than a year now doing his best to bring a Sir Boss, outsider sensibility to state government.
That has translated to blowing up a previously unassailable tower in state employee health benefits, educating the masses and slapping the “Connecticut” label on just about anything that moves, probably to include his coffee mug at the morning World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Theatrics? Check. Miracles? Maybe.
Helping Malloy”™s cause is that fact that, unlike Sir Boss having to tiptoe around the church hierarchy, Connecticut is at its heart a believer in progressive government. In “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur”™s Court,” Sir Boss is eventually done in by the church. In Connecticut, where Malloy”™s fellow Democrats control the political discourse, that isn”™t happening. Malloy is church and state, and only time will tell whether this has been the best possible story that Connecticut could have written for itself.
As Sir Boss puts it:
“The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out.”
