Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Charlie Baker’s inaugural video, complete with fake scenery

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Here it is.  Drop your thoughts and criticisms in the comments.  My first: the hands crossed in front of the chest is a bad idea.  

By the way, this whole bucolic scene of Baker outside on a pleasant pedestrian mall is a fake.  Great start, Charlie.

The video shows Baker in a dungaree shirt, gesticulating with his hands as he stands against a park backdrop. It actually was produced by having him stand indoors in front of a green screen and then superimposing the scenery behind him.

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  1. gratuitous green screen.  Not very good quality.

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    p>A little robotic, he needs some work.

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    p>”There is hope?”
    “I know we can bring change?”

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    p>Hope and Change Charlie Baker!

    • It was done to portray Baker as a rock, someone who will not move with the winds of change. Kind of like when the financing for the Big Dig changed – he kept right on with the game plan regardless what it meant for cities and towns across the state.

  3. …because he needs to practice.  So does his team.

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    p>I don’t like     the odd pauses    before clauses   in a sentence.   It sounds as if    he has   mental arrhythmia.

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    p>Per johnk, it screams green screen — the wind that doesn’t jibe up and the odd lighting (he’s rather well-lit from the left of the viewer for a shady glade, as the sun beats from directly overhead, judging by the cars going by.)  Oh, and…

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    p>Baker:Weld::McCain:Reagan
    Baker:Romney::McCain:Bush

    • The talking points are strong, I think. But they are meant for paper. Or better delivery.

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      p>Bad movement of hands.

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      p>Sloppy green screen.

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      p>Amateurish zoom in for lower tone “serious issues” zoom out for upbeat, zoom in for serious. Badly thought and badly edited. Too sharp a jump.

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      p>He doesn’t play well on camera. Looks and sounds a bit young. He must be great in a backroom and super smart, because his presentation is not confidence-inspiring.

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      p>At the same time, he also somehow portrayed an arrogance. The combination brought to mind immaturity, which was counter-intuitive, given his reputation to this point.

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      p>The Jindal comparison was apt, I thought. At the end of each performance I thought to myself: “this is what all the fuss was about?”

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      p>He’s better than that video, he has to be, considering his reputation and work within the Statehouse and in the healthcare industry. But this format is the first chink in the armor. He’s going to need to train on this. I have no doubt the national GOP will send help, given the other tools Baker has and the symbolic trophy the Mass Governorship would be.

      • I keep looking at this, and I wonder who were Baker’s people who saw this and said ‘this is great–release it’.  It’s Baker fault for having such body language, but it’s his campaign’s fault for showing it to the rest of us.

        • The guy touts his competence on an incompetent ad.

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          p>”I’m competent,” says the man.

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          p>”No, you’re not,” say the hands.

    • The one thing he’s got going for him is the argument that he’s succeeded in his two previous “turnarounds”, the Weld administration and Harvard Pilgrim.  Weld is still reasonably well thought of in retrospect.  On the other hand, being the brains of the Weld/Cellucci/Swift administrations means that he can reasonably be tarred with the Big Dig, and even with the security of MassPort prior to 9/11 if we want to go there.

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      p>The rationale, and the absence of concrete proposals, is exactly what worked for Romney in 2002.  But Romney was able to handle the communication tasks of wholesale politics in a way that Baker, so far, can’t.  And since Baker’s face and voice are so far unknown to a vast majority of the public, the crappiness of this video could really hurt him in establishing himself.

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      p>Then again, this is the state that voted for Fast Eddie King because of a snit over the sweater that Mikey wore during the snowstorm…

    • He’ll give Deval a good competitive race, despite efforts of people like David on this blog to Palinize him.  I don’t really know much about the guy except what you had posted previously as to what he didn’t do in Swampscott. Snarking about the background scenery on the video really doesn’t mean “didley squat” to most voters.

      • ..hate to see bad craftwork. It diminishes the genre.

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        p>Plus, voters notice shoddy.

        • Chris Gabrieli had fantastic TV ads but he still lost to Deval who had ads that are apparently not as good because I don’t even remember them.

          • Chris’s ads were vague, punchless, and too cute. Deval’s ads were … mostly of Deval. Deval was more confrontational, more inspiring, and left the impression he was going to do things differently and shake things up.

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            p>Gabs was a decent candidate; I’m not a hater. I just wouldn’t call his ads fantastic. I thought they were a waste of money at the time — I don’t think I’m just engaging in 20/20 hindsight.

        • Is this a net thing, or will it actually be aired?  Considering how unknown he is, Baker really does have to start defining himself this fall, but if this was the best take, I’d hate to see what the worse ones were.

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          p>Somebody said “he doesn’t know what to do with his hands”.  That may be true — and that is why you do several takes to figure it out.

          • Keep them at your side. Sounds lame, but it works ;p

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            p>(I’ve had more than one theater director who have gone insane over me ‘doing things’ with my hands.)

    • According to recent polling its a slim chance Deval keeps his job-even with Cahill in the mix.

  6. what was stopping him from rolling out of bed and taking a camera to the gazebo in front of the beach in Swampscott? That’s where he freaking lives, for heaven’s sake. It’s just like a Republican to skip the free, beautiful natural setting to do a quick youtube video… and pay (probably over a thousand) for an unnatural, not-compelling, hackish, over-analyzed, boring studio version that pretends to be in a beautiful, natural setting.

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    p>Fail.

  7. Somebody check Baker’s FEC filings. I think Jindal consulted on this!

    • This thing is a train wreak, from the ninja hand moves to sounding like he reading a script (badly).  So badly, it’s like someone overacting pretending to read from a script.

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      p>Not ready for prime time.  This thing is a joke.

  8. In this disinfomercial, Mr. Baker says, “The Massachusetts economy is a wreck right now.” (1:02)

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    p>Fortunately, CNBC says Mr. Baker is wrong.

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    p>In the study cited below, MA ranked 8th. The state ranked 15th in the 2008 version of this study.

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    p>

    Overall Rankings – 2009
    We scored all 50 states-using publicly available data-on 40 different measures of competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, we separated those metrics into the ten broad categories, with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers. We weighted the categories based on how frequently each is cited in state economic development marketing materials.

    Here are the ten categories ranked in our study:

    – Cost of Doing Business
    – Workforce
    – Quality of Life
    – Economy
    – Transportation
    – Technology & Innovation
    – Education
    – Business Friendliness
    – Access to Capital
    – Cost of Living

    • and so are hundreds of thousands of community theater people around the country – you think if they’d had an open casting call…

      • But I’ve seen enough of that series to know the acting gets a little better in previous seasons (and yes, I did use the plural version of season). I hope these two posts don’t out me as a horrible Star Trek nerd =p

  10. It’s not a bad presentation, content-wise, and I think the man himself probably could connect very well with the camera. But he certainly does not do it here. Hands flapping around like a seal at the aquarium; background that changes like a freaky MTV video — were releases obtained from the people walking around in the background? just wondering … maybe they are not identifiable, but maybe they are; the mic. appeared to pick up the sound of his hand clasps, and there even seemed, most strangely, to be some traffic noise. Maybe it was shot by the same team that produced Jim Ogonowski’s memorable Washington DC video.  

  11. But the talking points are lame. If the message is, I’ve succeeded in both the private and public sectors, it won’t be a lot of work to point out that the public sector work was the Romney administration, and the private sector work was a health insurance firm.

    • Does anybody know how Baker is in settings like this?  He must be effective in business meetings, given his resume, but we have a negative review of his performance in town government and he seems to have avoided the stump pretty carefully so far.

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      p>Thanks for posting this, PP.

  13. you guys are getting nervous.  Baker to me looks like a serious threat.  Level of vitriol that I’ll see on this post will only reinforce that thought.

    • if a candidate has a dud of a performance, one that he is first introducing himself.  If we point out how bad it was then we are nervous?  Please.  

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      p>You tell me.  Was this good?  Yes or No.

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      p>Did he not sound robotic?  Yes or No.

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      p>Did you think that this was a great first introduction to voters?

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      p>Let me know your thoughts…

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      p>This is exactly what we should comment about.

      • that Charlie Baker is a heckuva smart guy, and will be a very attractive candidate going forward given the economic circumstances (competence and humility will play well in 2010).  Think that we all need to pull out of the fishbowl that is the Internet if you think a webvideo at the height of summer the year before the election is the official “introduction to voters”.

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        p>Charlie Baker is a formidable candidate; should be an interesting election season.

        • meaning first.

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          p>The is his first political speech if you will, and let me tell you something, he doesn’t come off as a heckuva smart guy.  

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          p>How the hell did Gray think this was good?

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          p>Plus how long before they yank this think off his web page.

          • Charlie Baker in the mid-90s in the Boston Globe archives.  I’ll take competence over pretty boy looks or speechifying any day, especially after we’ve gone through the Democratic “fix” to the economy.  You can learn how to be mediawise; can’t learn how to be intelligent if you’re an empty suit.

            • Let’s take a look at Charlie’s record.  Yes, it’s nice to be in government during the Clinton era economic boom.  What did Charlie do while he was involved in decision making.  First and foremost is his involvement in the big dig and the structural deficit we have been living in since the Weld administration.  

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              p>We are still paying a heft price for Baker’s decisions, and Patrick’s original transportation bill with gas tax in part is paying for Baker’s actions, for the escalating cost overruns, push costs out to the future so he didn’t have to deal with them and ignoring infrastructure.  Guess what, that is part of his record and you have to take a look at it.

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              p>You cannot simply ignore it and say he made money as a CEO.  If you have a record in government, it should be reviewed.

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              p>Plus, if you are making your first political video, it’s probably not a good idea to come off as not ready.

            • The Turnpike was paying for salaries by credit, and both the Pike and MBTA were forced to take on massive amounts of Big Dig debt — the debt that is now crushing both entities. The administration was not providing oversight and, in the case of the Big Dig debt, openly pushed it onto those organizations because they, at that time, had stellar credit and it was much preferable (to incompetent Republicans) to push crushing debt on the next generation, as well as to a fraction of the state’s commuters, instead of paying for important work done then and sharing the burden of its costs.

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              p>If a Democrat does that, we call it incompetence. If a Republican does that, we forget it ever happened. IOKIYAR.

  14. Given the natural beauty of Massachusetts, beyond a bad idea to use this fake stuff. If Deval runs the campaign he ran four years ago…getting around the state and activating everyone from the grass roots…he will eat this guy alive. It is not about TV commercials, but I can think of some great negative ones.

  15. Is made in his shirt sleeves?

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    p>Call me a stickler, but Governor is a serious job.  I’d like to see a candidate wear a suit to his first interview.

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    p>He didn’t wow me with his charisma, I’m glad to say.

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