By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
The Massachusetts Republican Party just sent out an e-mail headlined “MassGOP Statement on Barack Obama.” The entire press release that follows is about Deval Patrick. Must be because they both have a Chicago accent, eh?
We’ll post the apology as soon as it arrives.
Update: Got a corrected e-mail shortly before noon. No apology.
I’m not quite sure what to say about Casey Ross’ story in today’s Boston Herald reporting that Gov. Deval Patrick has increased spending on his own office by 80 percent. I agree with Ross that new positions such as a “director of grassroots governance” are “questionable,” but what follows from that is I’d like to see someone ask the questions: What is it? How will we benefit? Will we benefit? The governor’s staff tells Ross that we will, but in very non-specific terms.
What’s crystal-clear, though, is that Ross has dug up more evidence, if any were needed, that Patrick is an unusually poor practitioner of the politics of symbolism. And symbolism matters. At a time when the economy is in the tank, gas and oil prices are skyrocketing and cities and towns are straining to make ends meet, Patrick should not be trying to launch non-essential — if desirable — programs that we’ve somehow managed to live without up until now. Civic engagement? Nice. Funding for schools or for his long-promised property-tax relief? Quite a bit nicer.
The drapes. The Caddy. The book-contract signing while his casino bill was going down to defeat. All evidence that Patrick’s got a tin ear.
I’m ridiculously late to the party, but if you haven’t read Jon Keller’s Wall Street Journal piece comparing Barack Obama to Deval Patrick, you should. It’s more timely than ever, given Obama’s emergence today as the all-but-certain nominee.
As Keller notes (joining many others), there are numerous stylistic and rhetorical similarities between Obama and Patrick, and he wonders what that portends for an Obama administration, given Patrick’s rocky stint (it’s now officially too late to call it a rocky start) as governor of Massachusetts.
Personally, I’ve thought for some time that the similarities between the two men are exaggerated, mainly because they’re both African-American. Their life stories couldn’t be more different. Obama, who deliberately chose the life of a community organizer and state legislator, knows his way around the streets; Patrick knows his way around a corporate boardroom.
Then there’s this nugget from an unnamed Republican analyst, dug up by Mickey Kaus and brought to my attention by Jay Fitzgerald: “Deval Patrick is an idiot. Obama is not an idiot.” Oof. Pretty harsh. But the evidence thus far suggests that there may be something to it.
When is the former dynamo known as Deval Patrick going to step up? Or was his campaign an anomaly, and what we’re seeing now is the real Patrick? Boston Herald reporter Jay Fitzgerald has the latest. It’s a bit convoluted, and I suspect it speaks to Patrick’s lack of leadership rather than to anything more nefarious.
In a nutshell, the Legislature recently passed a law allowing employees to collect triple damages if they win a wage dispute with their employer. Patrick opposed the bill but, unlike his predecessor, Mitt Romney, declined to veto it. Instead, he allowed it to become law without signing it.
Naturally, this will be a boon for lawyers — including Patrick’s wife, Diane Patrick, who was one of six lawyers at Ropes & Gray to sign a letter to clients alerting them about this new legal hazard. (Question: Did R&G really need her signature to drive the point home? This would be less of a story without that angle.)
Nearly two months ago, then-Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey reported that Patrick’s doomed proposal to build three casinos in Massachusetts would benefit Ropes & Gray, which has an extensive practice helping casino owners fight off gambling addicts and campaign-finance laws. Nice.
It’s all pretty remarkable and disheartening. In this week’s Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly attempts the meta-take, looking at Patrick’s communications strategy. Reilly writes:
The problem is simple: while Candidate Patrick seemed to say or do whatever the situation required, Governor Patrick frequently does exactly the opposite — whether it’s picking fights with the media, neglecting his staunchest grassroots supporters, or making ill-advised decisions that complicate his job instead of making it easier.
Over at WBZ-TV, Jon Keller reports that Patrick’s approval rating continues to nosedive. According to a Survey USA poll commissioned by WBZ, just 41 percent of registered voters now approve of the job Patrick’s doing, as opposed to 56 percent who don’t.
By now it should be obvious to Patrick that the governor’s job is hard — hard to learn and hard to do well. So why does he keep stepping in it, over and over again
If I were Ernie Roberts, the great Globe sports columnist, I’d tell you what I had for breakfast this Saturday morning. I’m not, so herewith a few observations about this and that.
Deval Patrick’s corporate benefactors. The drip-drip-drip over Gov. Patrick’s book proposal has been more a source of amusement than a cause for genuine concern. Today’s Globe story, in which we learn that he takes credit for the 10,000 people who turned out for a Barack Obama rally on the Common, is a hoot.
But yesterday’s Globe story properly noted a real problem — Patrick’s reliance on corporations, some of which will have business before the state, to buy books by the truckload in order to hand out to employees and clients. The impression you get is of a governor so convinced of his own rectitude that he believes he’s above the rules mere mortals have to follow.
Judge Murphy’s future on the bench. A Globe editorial today urges the state Supreme Judicial Court to suspend Judge Ernest Murphy, who was may be fined earlier this week for his bizarre and threatening letters to Herald publisher Pat Purcell after Murphy won a $2.1 million libel case against the Herald. [Correction: The Commission on Judicial Conduct has recommended that Murphy be censured, suspended for 30 days and fined $25,000.]
I assume the Globe means without pay. As a Herald editorial noted on Wednesday, Murphy has been out on paid leave since sometime last year, collecting his salary of nearly $130,000. It’s hard to think of a public official who has profited so handsomely from media criticism of his performance — which, no matter how imperfectly it may have been executed, is supposed to receive the highest possible protection from the First Amendment.
Helping the fans by gouging them. The Herald goes B-I-G today with the fact that the Red Sox are auctioning off Green Monster tickets to the highest bidder, with some seats going for more than $500.
The best quote is from Ron Bumgarner, the Sox’ vice president of ticketing: “We feel it’s our civic responsibility to keep tickets affordable for fans, and at the end of the day, this helps keep other ticket prices down.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Newspaper-killing chain faces death. The Journal Register Co., known within the business as the cheapest chain on earth, is sinking in a sea of debt and is in danger of being delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. The Journal Register’s best-known paper is the New Haven Register, but it also used to own the Taunton Gazette and the Fall River Herald News, now held by GateHouse Media. It also used to own the Woonsocket Call, where I was a co-op student in the mid-1970s.
Cape Cod Today publisher Walter Brooks sent out a blast e-mail with the news, which he titled “Every tear remained unjerked in its little ducts.” No kidding.
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Gov. Deval Patrick’s political problems, many of them self-inflicted, that have left him in danger of becoming irrelevant.
The Boston Globe today editorializes that Gov. Deval Patrick’s book may prove to be a distraction that takes away from his responsibilities to the state. Not to worry — it’s already finished!
Some pretty nasty suggestions from the Republicans. But you’ve got to love “Pair of Dice Lost” and “Drapes of Wrath.”
The Globe’s Matt Viser and Frank Phillips report that Deval Patrick will receive a $1.35 million advance for his autobiography, which is scheduled to be published in 2010. Doubleday will be the publisher.
A few observations.
First, Patrick obviously has an interesting story to tell. I’m not sure if it’s $1.35 million worth of interesting, given that he’s an essentially local figure. (Even if he is from Chicago originally.) But the size of the advance doesn’t strike me as entirely crazy — just half-crazy.
Second, 2010 is the year he’s up for re-election as governor. It strikes me that Patrick wouldn’t have agreed to a 2010 release date if he didn’t already have a pretty good idea of what he hopes to be doing then. Serving in a Democratic White House? Laying the groundwork for a 2012 presidential run of his own? Or something as mundane as seeking re-election?
Finally, Peter Porcupine makes an excellent point about Patrick’s decision to show his book proposal to New York publishers last week rather than see the casino bill through. Yes, it was headed for certain, overwhelming defeat. But shouldn’t the captain go down with his ship? Patrick’s view of the world, P.P. suggests, is that “the captain is the only one in the lifeboat.”
One of the odd side notes to last week’s overwhelming, 108-46 House vote against Gov. Deval Patrick’s casino plan was the absence of the governor, who, it was reported, had gone to New York City on personal business.
Now WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller reports that Patrick was peddling his autobiography, and that he’s hoping for as much as seven figures. Keller writes:
According to a publishing executive who saw the proposal, it promises a highly personal account — “like Barack Obama’s first book” — of Patrick’s childhood growing up poor on Chicago’s South Side, his journey to Milton Academy courtesy of a scholarship program that helps underprivileged kids obtain top-shelf secondary educations, and his matriculation at Harvard University.
Not that it was a big deal that he’d skipped town — everyone knew the vote was going to go against him. Interesting nevertheless.