He has a position on stem cells, but no comprehensive healthcare plan.
He has a plan to make college more affordable, but no plan to improve public elementary, secondary, or higher education.
He has a position on the income tax rollback, but, seriously, who doesn’t? (Reilly – For, Patrick – Against, Gabrieli – Maybe)
And if you look at the specifics of what Gabrieli is saying on the limited number of issues that he has chosen to address, you will find that it lacks the depth of his opponents by a large margin.
Truthfully, I have been a little surprised by Gabrieli’s lack of proposals and details because he is considered to be something of a policy wonk by some political pundits.
Maybe Chris Gabrieli is making the same calculation that mainstream media are making: people don’t care about specifics – which may, in fact, be true. Time will tell.
Call me old fashioned (and a Reilly supporter), but when somebody asks me to believe that they are going to “Get Results,” I would like to have some concept of what those results are going to look like.
I’m interested in what people think about the role of policy in campaigns, the media’s responsibility (or lack of responsibility) to cover it, or any of the issues raised by this post. Fire away!
Thanks for posting this. I did a three-way comparison on the issue I’m most familiar with, public higher education. Gabrieli mentions only one proposal, making certain savings for college tax deductible. By contrast, both Reilly and Patrick say that the public system is underfunded and promise to rectify this. Patrick gives more information about the current underfunding while Reilly says more about where he will spend. Reilly also promises rhetorical support and attention to appointments of the sort that Mihos (remember him) would also offer.
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Obviously any of the three will be better friends to public higher ed than Romney/Healey. But on this issue my reading of the documents backs up your general point that Gabrieli is offering the thinnest platform. (As a Patrick fan, I’m of course happy to see a Reilly supporter going negative on Chris first, in a wholly substantive way, naturally.) Gabrieli people — is there more stuff available on Chris’ positions that MaverickDem didn’t find?
and his positive campaign committee. They said it was OK. đŸ˜‰
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I AM trying to stick to the substance, but you can’t be serious about my being the first to go negative. Where you around during the convention? Patrick supporters were teeing off on Gabrieli like they could win a free hybrid vehicle with a hole-in-one!
I’ll rephrase to say “I’m glad to see a Reilly supporter criticizing CG rather than DP”.
Does this imply you work for the Reilly campaign?
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I wouldn’t know how to “run a post by Dukakis” and, as a volunteer worker on the Patrick campaign, I wouldn’t feel a need to. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to say anything to embarrass my candidate, but neither would I feel a need to have a post vetted.
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Sorry if you’ve disclosed this already, I just don’t remember seeing it.
Okay, label me literal-minded (I am) but I think maybe the message for people who post here is that I may not be alone. There were a few posts (I forget the handle of the poster) recently that were so outrageous that even I thought they were spoofs but then the person who put them out there got defensive and claimed they were serious!
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I’m as jocular as the next guy (the repartee at one of my poker games would have you in stitches), but this medium (at least for me) makes humor a difficult read at best.
It was a joke. A pretty good one, I thought, but what do I know!
is what you can say to me.
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On a note of more substance, I appreciate the work you put into this. I think it’s important to bring the issues to the voters. The fact that we both think it puts the Gabber in a bad light is totally irrelevant. đŸ˜‰
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[is I learnin’?]
Kaushansky claims his software can even identify sarcasm, a useful skill in the prickly blogosphere. Consider this statement: “The Treo 650 is the greatest phone in the world … NOT!” Umbria’s language-parsing software is “trained” to classify that and other common sarcastic turns of phrase as negative sentiments about the client. “Sarcasm is difficult for people to pick up, let alone machines,” says Kaushansky. “But it’s very valuable from a market research standpoint because it tells you how a customer really feels.”
I reformatted to make the post a little more “front page friendly” by using the Extended Text Box.
I believe that I heard Gabrieli on the John DePetro show yesterday AM, extolling the virtues of casinos for our Commonwealth – he said it was a high-end activity, or something to that effect, and that we could avoid the mistakes that have caused distress other cities, etc.
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I think that this is a pretty significant stand – I hope he puts it on his site soon.
but I would place that in the category of a position versus a policy proposal, unless it were part of a comprehensive economic development plan.
Your point is well taken.
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I listened to it for just a few minutes, and he made it sound that he believes that casinos are quite the panacea for any financial ills in our state.
On the subject of increasing the level of substntive discourse, why do you think the Reilly campaign has ignored our requests to interview the AG? Patrick spoke to us one whole year ago (at the end of last summer) when he started his campaign. He announced some of his policy proposals on this blog, and solicited feedback from the community (which he got a fair bit of, as I recall). Gabrieli spoke with us for 90 minutes. He was extremely forthcoming and we wrote up his ideas in detail. Harshbarger explained his endorsements of Patrick and Silbert to us for about 45 minutes earlier this week. W’ve had extensive discussions with all of the LG candidates, and the Murray and Silbert campaigns post here frequently. The three Editors have said repeatedly that we haven’t made up our minds about whom to endorse, and that is true (although we may be coming to some conclusions). But from the one-time Democratic frontrunner … silence.
I have to agree about Chris Gabrieli. When I’ve heard him speak about education issues I’m amazed by his breadth and depth of knowledge on the dubject, and I wish he would be that good on anything else, but he doesn’t show it.
Can you tell me about Chris’s ability to “get results” in education? I’m aware that he backed a charter school company that failed, and I seem to remember an after-school program that he had something to do with that didn’t produce the desired results, but I’m very fuzzy on the details. I’d appreciate hearing about things he’s DONE (as opposed to his “breadth and depth of knowledge”).
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And I do agree with the thrust of your comment, which is that this race is not about who should be the next Education Czar, but who should be the next Governor. I have a lot of respect for Chris, and I think he has good credentials and that his heart is in the right place, but I just think his rĂ©sumĂ© is a bit weak compared with my candidate’s…
If you want to compare results versus rhetoric on education, consider that “Extend the School Day” is the second item in Deval’s education agenda, while Chris has recently led the creation of actual extended day programs.
Expanded early childhood ed has long been the goal of educators who are concerned about improving student achievement longitudinally. Extended school day is not where you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to long-term beneficial effect on school readiness or acquisition of basic literacy skills, especially in younger children; early childhood ed is.
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Studies clearly demonstrate that children benefit most from an intensive PreK-Grade 3 experience. The critical window among all children in acquiring basic literacy is the PreK-Grade 3 period. The problem is, though, these children widely vary in their readiness, so effective teaching at this level requires intensive individualized instruction. If a student gets beyond Grade 3 lacking solid reading proficiency, remediation is much more difficult moving forward. These students are much more likely to become frustrated and disengaged from their own learning. Many end up on IEPs as the gaps between their cognitive abilities and their academic progress widen to the point where they become impossible to bridge through standard instructional practice.
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While expanded day is helpful in some schools and communities, it is by no means viewed as a universal educational imperative in the same way that early childhood ed is.
You sound like you know what you’re talking about on the issue, so thanks. But I don’t see it as an either/or. We’re comparing actual execution on expanded day to a dissertation on early ed. Even if you think early ed is a higher priority, I’ll take the proven results.
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Chris identified an area where progress could be made, and took the initiative to make it happen. Convincing districts to extend the school day, and helping them see how it could be done, is difficult work, in both policy planning and relationship-building, of exactly the type a good governor will need.
are in early childhood ed, not expanded day.
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You apparently missed the point of my comment.
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Extended day is not the panacea you suggest. Efforts should first be made to expland early childhood ed, which already has years of documentation and effective study of its efficacy behind it, THEN focus on those districts that would benefit from expanded day. Expanded day is the trendy thing at the moment and focusing on it at the expense of early childhood ed is simply not sound.
I understood perfectly the point of your comment. It was that you think early ed is much more important than expanded day, and that Deval is right to make early ed his #1 educational priority.
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But as I made abundantly clear, my point was not to compare early ed to expanded day. It was to compare Chris’s record on education to Deval’s, by underlining the fact that we’re comparing an achieved program to a proposal document. I never suggested expanded day is a panacea. (And if it’s just a trend, then why does Deval have it #2 in his education agenda?) I never even said Chris would place it above early ed as governor. And I said explicitly that neither should come “at the expense” of the other.
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There are tens of thousands of bright people all over the Commonwealth who could have produced lengthy, attractive, smart policy proposals just like Deval’s. Executing ideas in the chaotic environment where state/local/nonprofit/business worlds intersect is another matter altogether. I think Chris’s experience proves he can do that.
certainly reasonable can disagree. At any rate, one thing is for sure, however, and that is the that the individual who eventually makes it to the corner office will have to have extraordinary consensus-building skills. Educators, who are in the trenches doing the daily work, have their own ideas on what needs to be done to improve public education. Politicians, on the other hand, believe they know what’s best. In reality, it will take an effective bridge-builder who knows how to listen to the people actually teaching in classrooms to get something meaningful done. Gabrieli may have the requisite skills, but I think the right person for the job is Deval Patrick. [shrug]
I don’t know anything about his “results” though I might be interested if I was considering his candidacy, but he’s all wrong on immigration and trying too much to be middle of the road on everything else (he also reminds me of myself way too much). Patrick beats every other candidate in every area, except Chris on education. And I think Garbieli would be a great education expert to bring into the Patrick administration if not campaign (he’s already got a pretty good team with Sam Kelley and Scott Harshbarger already there).
That is a wonderful. unglamorous post — useful stuff rather than pontificating. Awesome.
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Of course, given some of the reaction, I wonder if it isn’t wasted here. If one candidate found a way to fully fund everything, cut taxes to zero, and make the Boston Celtics relevant again, supporters of the other two would instictively attack.
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On an unrelated note, the whole basketball-as-a-state-sport thing…well, yeah, since it was invented here and we have the most successful NBA franchise and everything. I don’t see why people are upset…
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There are about 1,500-2,500 people who stop by here each day. Only a tiny fraction post comments. Theoretically, some fraction of the silent majority is influenced by what they read, and can discriminate between campaign rhetoric and substance and, more particularly, will draw their own concludions from what they read. Vive la defference!
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As to basketball, I just think it is silly to have an “official state sport” since everyone here enjoys so many different sports — football and baseball not least.
Thank you for posting these. I’ve already seen all these proposals, but then, I’m a political junkie. I hope people have the time to read through at least some of these proposals…
I’m surprised to see folks paying that much attention to candidate’s policy proposals. Don’t you know too well by now that political candidates can promise you everything under the sun to look smart and thoughtful in order to get elected? They assembled teams of policy experts with the goal of getting proposals that will play well with voters and get media attention. They don’t even get involved trying to learn some of it before the proposal goes public.
I think it is better to judge candidates on their record: Patrick on civil rights work and serving on numerous boards; Reilly on crime fighting experience and standing up for the “little guy”; Gabrieli on after school work and business carrier. Then we can get a better sense on what to expect from them. Campaign promises (and proposals) are no more than promises…
Vladimir
And I’m sort of jealous you said it!
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“Call me old fashioned, but when somebody asks me to believe that they are going to “Get Results,” I would like to have some concept of what those results are going to look like.”