GLEASON RAPS KENNEDY ATTITUDE TOWARD MASSACHUSETTS POLITICS

Herbert P. Gleason '50, a Boston attorney and leader of COD, an organization of reform Democrats said yesterday he is "profoundly disappointed in President Kennedy's role in Massachusetts politics."

Speaking before a Winthrop House forum on "The Mess in State Politics," Gleason called Kennedy's appointment of Benjamin A. Smith '39 to the Senate "not much of a contribution to the Commonwealth or the Democratic Party."

As an example of the President's attitude toward State politics, Gleason cited an anecdote from Theodore H. Whites The Making of the President 1960. Someone asked Kennedy, then a Presidential candidate, what he had done during his career in Massachusetts. Reportedly Kennedy answered "I've kept out of the swamp."

Turning to corruption in Massachusetts, Gleason pointed to instances of "staggering greed" among State and Boston officials. With tongue in cheek, he praised the "ingenuity" of John J. McGrath a former city auctioneer. According to Gleason McGrath until a few weeks ago made a habit of selling city-owned real estate to himself. If not illegal, this was "a plain conflict of interest," asserted Gleason.

Gleason said one reason for widespread corruption in Massachusetts is the "absence of a forceful or coherent policy on both sides--Republican and Democrat." This absence of policy, he continued, makes for a lack of involvement and a tendency to regard the State House as "a huge employment agency rather than a governing body."

Other participants in the panel were Noil Staebler, candidate for Congress-man-at-large in Michigan, and Murray Seegar of the Cleveland plain Dealer, a Nieman fellow. Staebler asserted that when money replaces responsibility as the object of State officials' efforts, the result is "a kind of barroom government."

Seegar said that newspapers are doing a poor job of informing their readers of corruption in government. Because of the high death rate among newspapers, competition is less fierce and crusading is unprofitable. "In Massachusetts, our press has been woefully inadequate, especially the Boston papers," he added.