Peter Porcupine: What a Difference a Year Makes!

Last year on this date, a little after 5 p.m., Porcupine was standing outside the wrought iron gates of the Massachusetts State House, and snapped this picture of Gov. Mitt and Ann Romney as they paused for the traditional 19 gun salute for the departing Governor.

The central doors of the State House are only opened for a current President, a head of State, and a departing Governor. The Long Walk is usually very festive, and this was no exception. Gov. Romney had just completed the exchange of traditional symbols of power, giving them to Gov.-Elect Deval Patrick - The Pewter Key, a ceremonial key to the lock on the Governor's office door; The Gavel, made from wood from the U.S.S. Constitution; The Butler Bible, given to the Commonwealth by Gov. Benjamin F. Butler when he departed office in 1884; and the Massachusetts General Statutes, a two-volume set of the state's General Statutes dating back to 1860, in which each Governor leaves a note to his successor inscribed in the volumes.

Porcupine watched as Gov. Romney left the State House, giving a friendly wave to the reporters standing up on the balcony. By today, that cordiality might be tempered somewhat - at a recent party, Porcupine was talking with a Romney campaign operative from California, Dan Centrinello, who said he had never in his RNC work all across the nation seen such a vindictive and misleading media corps as that in Boston. But really, much of that is due to their complete and utter disbelief that Gov. Romney might triumph where Sen. John Kerry failed; here in the Bluest State, how can our random speck of Red be a national success?

Exactly one year later, Mitt and Ann Romney are at the Iowa caucuses, with New Hampshire early next week. Gold or Silver, as the Governor likes to put it, it has been an amazing effort by a formerly obscure Governor from a population-losing, doctrinaire New England state.