I wanted to post this the morning I heard it, but it wasn't available on the BBC website until today - just in time for Election Day. (also, just in time for Mary Anne's birthday) :

Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America" for Saturday, November 2, 2002.

(quoting)

...Boston remains the fount of the art of Massachusetts politics.

Why? A former long-time speaker of the House of Representatives, a jowly, affable, ruddily-nosed old Irishman, Tip O'Neill, once told me.

"Because," he said, "all politics is local."

"We don't talk about our constituency, we try to find Mary Byrne a job, smooth the palm of a cop who made a wrongful arrest, take old Mrs McCarthy and her sister to the polls, get young Paddy off the bottle and into a job."
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You can read the full text at that link, of course - better still, use the button near the upper right corner of the page to hear the still-mellifluous tones of the man himself.

Fox

[btw: a couple of weeks ago I gave the weekly broadcast time incorrectly - for the US version of BBC World Service, it's 0915 GMT (4:30 a.m., EST), Saturdays]