By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Jon Keller calls out “knee-jerk critics” of President Obama following the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips. Right on cue, Michael Graham rips Obama for not unleashing the Navy to have at the pirates until Phillips was in “imminent danger.”
Does Graham not understand that the Navy sharpshooters easily could have blown Phillips’ head off by mistake? What they did was incredibly risky — which is why they couldn’t do it until they were convinced the pirates were about to kill their hostage.
Gov. Deval Patrick’s politically clueless performance of recent days has brought out some sharp commentary from local pundits. A quick round-up — not meant to be comprehensive, just stuff that caught my eye:
We are now past the half-way point of Patrick’s four-year term. It’s pretty sobering — and discouraging — to realize that, without a major turnaround, we’re looking at yet another disappointment in the governor’s office.
The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald today are atwitter with excitement over surveys showing that support for casino gambling is on the rise. With the new Massachusetts House speaker, Robert DeLeo, in favor of expanded gambling, it looks like Gov. Deval Patrick is going to renew his ill-considered push to impose this blight on the state.
So leave it to Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) to dig a bit deeper into one of those surveys, put out by UMass Boston, which supposedly shows that casinos create better jobs for non-college-educated workers than other businesses.
Keller finds that the study was funded by construction-industry contractors and executives, who would stand to profit mightily from building casinos. The study also fails to mention the inconvenient fact that the huge “resort casinos” favored by Patrick are now cratering and shedding jobs. Keller writes:
Let’s face it, folks, casinos have been sleazy but lucrative money pits in the past and they may be again, but they are not anything close to a valid answer to the prayers of the working class.
The only kind of survey that matters is the one that asks people if they want a casino built in their community. Last I checked, two-thirds of Massachusetts residents are opposed. That’s not likely to change.
You’d never know it from reading the Globe, but even Middleborough residents voted overwhelmingly against a casino on the one occasion they were given a chance to express their views.
This is a loser, and Patrick’s obsession with staking his governorship on it is appalling.
I was appalled yesterday when I read Boston Globe reporter Matt Viser’s account of how Gov. Deval Patrick had publicly put down Worcester Mayor Konstantina Lukes at a speech before the Massachusetts Muncipal Association on Friday. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
At one point, the governor had a frosty exchange with Worcester Mayor Konstantina B. Lukes, after she appeared to smirk while the governor answered her question.
“Before you make a face, mayor, let me finish my answer, all right?” Patrick snapped.
Once he finished his response, he glanced over at her again and said, “Is that clear? OK. Now you can make your face.”
Later, WBZ-TV (Channel 4) posted video of the exchange. And though Viser got Patrick’s words right, I’m not sure about “frosty” — it seems more light-hearted than that. As Jon Keller suggests, it’s hard to know what to make of it.
Given that Patrick was announcing a $128 million cut in local aid, maybe the governor ought to work on his timing if he had intended his remarks as a joke.
Jon Keller posts a very tough critique of Gov. Deval Patrick following the resignation — or, should I say, the “resignation” — of Patrick’s transportation secretary, Bernard Cohen.
I don’t know nearly enough about the inner workings of the governor’s office to be able to offer an intelligent analysis. But Keller’s basic theme is that this represents a triumph of the old-line hacks over competent outsiders such as Cohen. Keller writes:
Cohen was a pure policy wonk who worked quietly and diligently to restore order to the state’s chaotic transportation planning and build working relationships with key political players. But he was not much of a headline-grabber or Patrick kiss-up. And he had a tendency to tell the truth about things, like the state’s utter inability to afford the commuter-rail extension to New Bedford that Patrick keeps insisting is still in the cards. So for his trouble, Cohen is now out, to be replaced by [James] Aloisi or someone like him, some wired-in smooth-talker who will convince the governor that he can sell the legislature on the huge toll and tax hikes Patrick apparently believes are necessary.
The Outraged Liberal takes a different view of the “ineffective” Cohen and writes: “While critics snipe that apparent successor James Aloisi was part of the team that created the mess, at least he knows where the bodies are buried.”
But Jay Fitzgerald says of Aloisi that “bringing back a key figure from the Big Dig Culture is an anti-reform disaster.”
And I agree with Jay that House Speaker Sal DiMasi is once again leading the good-government charge, writing an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe in which he calls for change before raising tolls or the gas tax. I’ll even forgive DiMasi for his hoary cliché of a lede.
Photo of Patrick (cc) by Allie Taylor and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Jay Fitzgerald rounds up more on the matter of whether Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich broke the law simply because he wanted something in return for a Senate seat.
Everybody wants something. Some somethings are legal, some aren’t. But simply being a foul-mouthed, arrogant moron is not a crime.
Jon Keller doesn’t like Barry Coburn’s op-ed in today’s New York Times, in which Coburn takes U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to task for his inflammatory anti-Blago rhetoric.
I think Coburn makes some good points, though. A prosecutor in a high-profile political-corruption case has enormous credibility with the public, as the charges invariably play into (often justified) cynicism about politics.
I come neither to praise nor bury Blago. But let’s calm down until we see the specifics.
For several days now, I’ve been thinking about the notion that Sarah Palin is just as experienced as Barack Obama — or, for that matter, more experienced, since she’s got executive experience and he doesn’t. I find it ludicrous, so it took me a while to wrap my arms around it.
Though “experience” and “qualifications” are being treated in this campaign as though they are the same thing, they are not. Experience is one of the things you look at — an important thing — in deciding whether someone is qualified. But there are other factors, too.
Let’s stipulate that Obama is less experienced than would be ideal, though I would argue that his years in the legislature of a large industrial state is vastly more relevant than Palin’s time running a tiny town, followed by her cup of coffee as governor. Despite Obama’s lack of experience at the national level, few people in public life today have done more serious reading, thinking and speaking about the wide array of national and international issues that will face the next president.
Thus the question with Obama is whether his deep knowledge of the issues, much of it theoretical and academic, will hold up once he gets slapped in the face by reality. It’s a legitimate concern. Ideally Obama would have run in 2012 or 2016. But politics is never ideal, and he took the risk — a smart risk, in my view — that it was better to run before he was as experienced as he ought to be than become just one of the Washington crowd.
Obama’s qualifications are his experience, his knowledge and his judgment. Voters have been probing those three elements for many months now and have gotten to know quite a lot about him.
Then there is Palin, who was thrust upon the nation less than a week ago. Most of Palin’s experience is virtually identical to chairing the board of selectmen in a small New England town. Sorry, but Obama’s years as a community organizer and as a state legislator, and his short time in the U.S. Senate, are vastly more relevant than Palin’s years as mayor and her brief stint as the governor of state with the population of Boston — a state awash in so much oil money that the only question is how to spend it.
So what about the rest of her qualifications? Her knowledge and her judgment? That’s what we’re all trying to find out now. I’ve made it clear that I think she comes up short on both fronts. There is no evidence that she’s ever given more than superficial thought to any national or international issue other than energy, and I’m not sure how her ideas differ from Obama’s except that she wants to drill, drill, drill. And why not? She thinks the views of the vast majority of the world’s atmospheric scientists — that humans are contributing to global warming — are mere opinions with which she is free to agree or disagree. And she disagrees.
Jon Keller, in his commentary on WBZ Radio (AM 1030) this morning, argued that experience is overrated, and that both Palin and Obama have enough. I don’t quite agree, but I agree with him that that’s not how voters will ultimately make up their minds.
People will vote for the Obama-Biden team or the McCain-Palin team on the basis of issues, values and party identification. In the end, experience is just something to talk about.
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the Obama campaign and its supporters on the left have made way too much of the New Yorker’s satirical cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-loving terrorists.
Which puts me at odds with Jon Keller, who included me in a piece on the controversy last night on WBZ-TV (Channel 4).
Jon Keller’s blog finally unveils a working RSS feed and permalinks. Which means I can link to his post on Katherine Patrick.