While Patrick has indeed been swinging a little wildly in the last couple of weeks with promises, his honesty on the campaign trail, particularly compared to rivals Kerry Healey and Tom Reilly, was noteworthy.
As campaigners, both lied about a budget surplus. Both said the state could afford an income tax cut when such was clearly not the case. Patrick, to his credit, resisted the easy lie, and for most of the campaign, said he wanted to work to lower property taxes. The promise to lower property taxes came late in the game.
Healey and Reilly also tried to distract voters from the issues with ad hominem attacks. Reilly with an aborted plan to launch bizarre series of protests tying Patrick to Coca Cola’s business practices in Columbia. Healey with the leak of Patrick’s brother-in-law’s rape conviction to the Boston Herald, the thuggish Inmates for Deval, and, of course, the Ben LaGuer case.
Kerry Healey’s campaign did the Willie Horton with Patrick’s advocacy of Ben LaGuer, inferring that being tough on crime was ignoring the 4th Amendment.
I don’t want to rehash the election, just underline the candidates regard for the truth. The point is there is always a gap between campaign rhetoric and reality. That’s the “no, duh” of politics. As governor, Patrick now has to close that gap. It would be nice to see Vennochi and Lehigh consider our governor in the context, not just of his promises, but on how he deals with that gap in comparison to other governors and other candidates.
One of the Deval Patrick’s campaign was the scarcity of false promises. While his rivals (I leave Grace Ross out here) did their best to distract and promise what the electorate knew they couldn’t deliver, Patrick came closer to honesty than any Massachusetts governor I’ve seen in a long time. That’s the man bites dog story.
–Mb
sabutai says
Was that Deval wanted to be held to a higher standard. From his rhetoric to his campaign style, we were promised a break from politics as usual. If your argument is that Deval is practicing politics as usual, then I think many of us (not just the media) are justified in saying that Deval has failed to meet the standards he asked us to set for him.