Chris Gabrieli engaged in a bit of projection yesterday when he claimed that Deval Patrick is out of the mainstream or out of touch with the voters. It is actually Gabrieli who is out of touch with the voter, and Gabrielis decision to attack Patrick personally is not going to change that fact. Here are just two examples of how out of touch with real people Gabrieli is.
Example #1
I have heard Gabrieli and others relate many times the story about how he quit medical school to help with his fathers business. It was mentioned again in yesterdays Globe article about him:
Goodbye medical school. At the age of 23, he was in charge of a struggling business, with his parents’ financial well-being hanging in the balance. “He had a willingness to sacrifice himself,” John Gabrieli said. “He took the big hit; I didn’t. He felt there was no other way out,” said the elder brother, an MIT professor, behavioral neuroscientist, and authority on human memory. After three years, the company stabilized.
Every time I hear this story and about how Gabrieli made this big sacrifice,” I want to scream. I think about a number of my friends who recently have taken time off from busy careers at great financial cost to take care of aging parents who are ill. My friends are making real sacrifices to help their parents. In the end, their parents will die and my friends will not end up with a successful company and millions of dollars. Most will struggle to put their own lives back in order, financially and professionally.
To call what Gabrieli did a sacrifice, apparently in an attempt to score some points with the voters, is ridiculous and shows how out of touch he is with what true sacrifice is. When Gabrieli decided to leave medical school to work for the family business, he made a life decision, which I am sure his parents appreciated, but it was not a sacrifice. It turned out to be a good decision because it made him a very wealthy person. However, he easily could have gone back to medical school at the end of the three years it took to make the business successful; he did not.
Example #2
Gabrieli simply does not get the whole money issue. Here is a quote from yesterdays Globe article:
There’s sort of an assumption, to be totally honest, that I must write a check, which is an insult,” he said during an interview. “As if the way I succeeded in business was that I just had to write a check.
What Gabrieli refuses to acknowledge is that he is in the Governors race precisely because he is able to write a large check. Without that ability, he most likely would not have received the 15% he needed at the convention to be a viable candidate. In addition, the fact that his campaign has been financed primarily with his own funds highlights the lack of support he has from people willing to contribute their own money or time to his campaign. He clearly does not have the grassroots support that Deval Patrick has, and no amount of his own money is going to buy him that support.
I do think Gabrieli calling some of Devals positions as “out of the mainstream” is a pretty big stretch. However, to question whether leaving medical school to help his family is a sacrifice is to reduce your point to a game of “my sacrifice is bigger than yours”. By comparison you could compare taking time off to tend to aging and ill parents to the plight in Dafur, but that would be ridiculous. I consider leaving what I assume was his dream to help his family a sacrifice. Just because it turned out well doesn’t make it any less valid.
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On your second point, yes Gabrieli has bought air time and paid for staffers and so on an so forth. Does that make his positions or his commitment any less valid than Devals?
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Lack of money can loose you a gubernatorial election but very rarely can it buy you an election.
It is how Gabrieli uses his so-called sacrifice that indicates how out of touch he is with what the average person has to deal with. Most people would view what Gabrieli describes as a sacrifice as an opportunity. It was an opportunity that most people will never have in their lives- take over a family business at an early age, make millions. (By the way, if he really wanted to go to medical school, seems like he could have done so in his late twenties, if in fact it really was his dream.)
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As for your comment about Dafur, I think someone who takes time off to tend to care for aging and ill parents and someone who takes time away from their life to help people in Dafur are making similar sacrifices. Both people give up a lot to help people who need their help with no thought or possibility of any monetary or tangible reward. The reward is often intrinsic.
What has happened to the Democratic Party when we’re asking which millionaire living in a gated community has less in common with the voter?
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Nice of Deval to repeatedly point out that he and Chris aren’t “regular guys” tonight.