Chip Ford's CLT Commentary
To get yourself elected you can present yourself as
all things to all people. To govern, you can't.
The election is over: The governing has begun
for Gov. Elect Deval Patrick.
And he's already losing his base -- before even
taking his oath of office next month.
His supporters -- the so-called "moonbats" who
idealistically and blindly supported him in swarms have much to learn,
to digest and absorb, about the Realpolitik.
The "cult of personality" again has become business
as usual: political cynicism is back, not that it ever went away.
Even the Boston Globe editorial page is starting to
sound unhinged -- and the usual apologists like Eileen MacNamara are
scrambling to somehow justify the Deval apparent sell-out.
Welcome to Massachusetts -- 2007-2011. Before
Gov. Patrick even takes office the intrigue quickens; and the best is
undoubtedly yet to come.
 |
|
Chip Ford |
The Boston Globe
Monday, December 11, 2006
Letters to the Editor (I)
It's his party and we'll cry if we want to
Excellent Brian McGrory column on Deval Patrick's planned inaugural slap
in the face to supporters who were voting for change ("Deval's
coronation," City & Region, Dec. 8). I can't say that I truly believed
that lovely campaign rhetoric about inclusiveness, reining in spending,
government of and for the people, and an end to business as usual when I
voted for Patrick. Every politician uses his or her skills as well as
possible, and among Patrick's are eloquence and the appearance of
empathy. Still, I'd have liked to have held onto the illusion at least
until he took office.
And arguments that it wasn't going to be public money are a cop-out.
Anyone donating part of that $1 million for a self-congratulatory party
ought to be ashamed. Here's a tip: Donate to your local PTA,
conservation trust, or library instead. Patrick was right about local
aid being slashed, and these services need the help a lot more than
lobbyists need a returned favor.
Jeff Sauer
Pepperell
The Boston Globe
Monday, December 11, 2006
Letters to the Editor (II)
It's his party and we'll cry if we want to
Brian McGrory is right; the people don't want parties. I too was stunned
to learn of plans for $1.5 million worth of inauguration parties for our
new governor. My town is facing another $750,000 budget shortfall this
year. The fight to control health insurance costs for our teachers is
dividing our small town with an uncivil ugliness worthy of Beirut or the
West Bank. And our town is blessed with per capita income, property
values, and public schools way above the state average. If we can't make
ends meet, what hope do the Lowells, Fitchburgs, and Lawrences have?
Message to Mr. Patrick: I voted for you and have tremendous faith in
your intelligence, compassion, and competence. In your moving victory
speech you told us you are human and will need forbearance when you make
the inevitable mistake. Expensive parties are a terrible mistake. Please
celebrate responsibly and humbly, the way you campaigned. The way we
hope you'll lead.
Laura Martineau
Harvard
The Boston Globe
Friday, December 8, 2006
Deval's coronation
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist
Great start, Deval. Great start.
If you put your most trusted strategists in a room and asked them to
outline the exact way in which you don't want to begin your
governorship, I guarantee you these would be the first two items on
their list:
Don't cozy up to lobbyists.
Don't hold a massive, self-celebratory inaugural gala.
And look what you've gone and done.
First things first: When does an inauguration become a coronation? Maybe
after the fourth day.
Deval L. Patrick has planned a five-day extravaganza for early January
costing anywhere from $1 million to $1.6 million, a state record, and
perhaps twice what Mitt Romney spent. Exact details haven't been
released, but Patrick apparently plans to ride a hand-carried chariot
from Boston to the Berkshires as a collection of serfs throws rose
petals.
Just kidding, but barely. There will be parties here, parties there,
parties everywhere, including a private event for big-ticket donors who
are footing the bulk of the bill. The big gala, which is supposed to be
accessible to the average Joe, costs $50 a head. I don't know of a lot
of working couples ready to spend $100 to watch their governor and the
first lady waltz.
Patrick's finance people, I'm told, were seething yesterday over the
appearances of this bender, wondering if someone had lost his or her
mind. Patrick, somewhat earnestly, sought their advice on what he should
do instead.
Try this. Try throwing the gates around the State House wide open on
Inaugural Day. Try unlocking every door in the complex. Let the public
toss footballs on the lawn. Let them wander the House and Senate
chambers, pose around the gubernatorial portraits, and poke their heads
into the governor's office.
Then stand in the Great Hall from morning until night and greet every
single resident who wants to come by and share fears and dreams. The
message: This is your building, your government, your future, and I'm
here to listen and ready to act.
If you want, do it again in Worcester and in Springfield. The whole
thing wouldn't cost more than a hundred thousand dollars in security and
hot coffee to keep the masses warm.
Yesterday, Patrick defended the festivities, telling reporters, "This is
about including people." But the people don't want parties; they want
good government. They don't want pomp and circumstance; they want tough
decisions and strong results.
And they certainly don't want their newly elected governor who
campaigned on a mantle of reform cozying up to lobbyists before he even
takes the oath. The Globe reported yesterday that Timothy P. Murray, the
incoming lieutenant governor, was to be the featured speaker at a
breakfast hosted by one of the city's most influential lobbying firms
for the benefit of its clients. The event was canceled after the story.
Brilliant, guys. Brilliant.
Patrick, with all his eloquence, brains, and mandate, has more potential
to succeed as governor than anyone in memory. He ran a campaign based on
hope, so here's hoping that hubris doesn't get in the way of his
success.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Governor of the people
By Eileen McNamara
Five days might be too many and $1 million might be too much, but it is
fiction to characterize the festivities being planned to make
Governor-elect Deval Patrick's inauguration more accessible as some
bacchanalia for Democratic insiders.
If anything, those insiders are whining that they have too little
influence with the first Democratic governor in 16 years whose first
Cabinet appointee, Leslie Kirwan as secretary of administration and
finance, made her mark as a budget analyst in the administration of
William F. Weld, former Republican governor.
The movers and shakers planning Patrick's inaugural events across the
state are not Democratic swells; they are the same citizen-volunteers
who helped orchestrate his historic victory at the polls last month.
There is the Wilmington teacher who proposed busing more than 1,000 high
school students from across the state to Tremont Temple Baptist Church
in Boston for a "youth inaugural" and a firsthand civics lesson.
There is the Cape Cod retiree who signed up the Paul Nossiter jazz trio
on Friday to play at a two-hour reception on Jan. 7 in Hyannis, where,
for $20 per person, celebrants can enjoy music, munch on crudités, and
hear Patrick speak.
There is the Andover youth basketball coach who is gathering a committee
of volunteers this week to plan a similar reception for residents of the
Merrimack Valley and the North Shore.
"Sure, they are going to spend money on the gala itself," Paul Hush said
of the formal inaugural ball at the Boston Convention and Exhibition
Center in South Boston. "Our event on the Cape is a way to say that,
though the campaign has ended, there's still a role for all of us. I
know the enthusiasm is there and I think he is smart to want to keep it
alive."
Hush and his wife, Joanne, let out their Cape Cod home last summer,
rented an apartment in Charlestown, and hit the campaign trail. Paul is
in his 70s, but he hardly qualifies as a seasoned political operative.
Their first campaign experience was in 2000 during former New Jersey
senator Bill Bradley's failed bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
This year, they traveled to every corner of Massachusetts, organizing
rallies and community forums for Patrick. To Paul Hush, the inaugural
parties being planned are meant to acknowledge the often-ignored voters
beyond metropolitan Boston.
"If I could do it in a day, I would," Patrick said in a telephone
conversation Friday evening of his plans to travel from Pittsfield to
Hyannis to greet voters, "but it's a big state and I need to sleep. The
whole point is to find a way to keep people engaged, all the people, not
just the people in the capital city."
This is not to say there have not been missteps in the weeks since
Patrick broke the Republican hold on the corner office.
It was a mistake, quickly corrected, for incoming Lieutenant Governor
Timothy P. Murray to accept an invitation to a closed-door forum at one
of the city's most prominent lobbying firms. More problematic, and less
likely to be reversed, is the decision to solicit corporate donations of
as much as $50,000 for the privately financed inaugural gala.
Collecting small donations from people of modest means was at the heart
of the Patrick campaign, a real and symbolic refutation of the big money
contributors who have come to dominate American politics.
If tapping corporate donors for the inaugural looks like a
contradiction, Patrick says he understands that perception, "but no one
is buying access to me. I wanted the people who made this victory
possible to be able to celebrate it and to do that takes money."
In a gesture designed to underscore his commitment to lead all of
Massachusetts, not just the insiders, Patrick hopes literally to take
his inauguration outside. He wants to take the oath of office and
deliver his inaugural address directly to the people on the State House
steps.
The Boston Globe
Monday, December 11, 2006
A Boston Globe editorial
Feeding the public conversation
"What's the message that you want to get to this new governor?" Kay
Sloan asked at a meeting last week at the Massachusetts College of Art.
Sloan, the college's president, is also a member of the "creative
economy" transition working group, one of many that Deval Patrick sent
around the state to listen.
Last week and this week, people have been stepping up to the microphone
in Boston, Springfield, West Barnstable, Holyoke, and other places. They
have talked about education, housing, economics, crime, transportation,
and healthcare.
The meetings should help keep the public engaged and energized. And
Patrick should follow up with action and progress reports.
At one meeting, Rachel Rubin testified that years of unstable funding
have turned public higher education into a roller coaster. A professor
of American studies at University of Massachusetts in Boston, Rubin
said: "It's hard to learn on a roller coaster. It makes you sick to your
stomach."
At the creative economy meeting, Rachel Goodwin said: "If you're poor or
middle class you're probably not getting the training you need to be a
professional musician." A pianist and Dorchester resident, Goodwin
mapped the pitfalls. As a teacher, she needs to charge high fees to
cover her own cost of living, which excludes many children in her
neighborhood. Factor in limited arts education in schools, and it's a
situation where a potential Beverly Sills or Wynton Marsalis may not
discover or develop talent.
"It's no longer possible to live an alternative lifestyle in Boston,"
Goodwin added, joining others who say that Massachusetts is losing
artists to other states -- along with the creativity and economic
activity that these artists would generate.
One repeated theme: Make the state work the way it's supposed to. Make
sure, for example, that public pay raises aren't delayed for years.
Staff existing programs and task forces. Restore funding where it has
been badly cut.
Another request is to help residents keep up with the economy by making
sure that job training leads to actual jobs. And pave a clear road that
immigrants can follow to get from English classes to employment.
And, of course, do whatever is humanly possible to create more
affordable housing -- because from recruiting doctors to nurturing
artists, a new era of reasonable rents and mortgage payments could
drastically improve the state's destiny.
The teams will report to Patrick with recommended goals for his
administration on Dec. 15. Patrick must follow up. But there's another
opportunity that shouldn't be missed. People should keep talking,
forming alliances to create political willpower as well as a public
factory that manufactures innovative policy ideas and projects.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml