Jack Gilligan died at 92 on Monday and it’s regrettable that he wasn’t able to announce his passing to a bunch of reporters gathered at his table at the end a long campaign day. His eyebrows would rise slightly, and with a teasing grin he would report that “the old banana-nose Irishman had finally done something that pleased his critics.”

Gilligan, former city councilman, congressman and governor, had a disarming way of shaping his most serious ideas with the wit of one who wasn’t quite sure that his listeners were ready for dead-weight political discourse to carry the moment. But […]