“The conversation we’re having is about two totally huge paradigm changes,” said Crosby, who was a member of Patrick’s transition team. “The biggest one is the conversation about whether or not to have new revenue, as opposed to how much shall we cut. The second one is about what new services shall we deliver, as opposed to what services shall we cut.”
Ambitious legislation, Crosby added, takes time to go through any Legislature, particularly when the same party is controlling all three top spots at the State House for the first time in years.
“They just don’t know how the hell to do this dance,” he said of Patrick and the legislative leaders. “That’s not a sign of strength or weakness. That’s a sign of incredibly changed times, and nobody knows how to deal with this.”
Crosby’s contention that Patrick “has initiated a debate the State House has not had in nearly two decades” rings true, but one wonders whether Patrick is up to the debate. I’m reminded of an article that appeared in Commonwealth magazine called Recipe for Success.
What are the most important habits of highly effective governors?
It’s a simple question, and it is answered simply enough. The baseline for good performance is to hire talented people; set a few clear, achievable priorities; work with the Legislature to produce a balanced and productive budget; insist on high ethical standards throughout government; and stay focused on the job for a full term.
Patrick visited former Gov. Michael Dukakis before running for office. It’s too late for Patrick to set out a few priorities. Time will tell if his nebulous proposals reinventing education and establishing casino gambling will form into something clear and achievable. It may be time for him to seek out the Duke’s wisdom again.
-Mark
Remember him? He was a groundbreaking candidate — a Chinese-American with a compelling life story who personally connected with lots of voters with his personal style. On the trail, voters felt comfortable with Locke, and excited about breaking a barrier by putting him in power.
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Gary Locke became governor with 58% of the vote, a strong victory that looked to set him up for a powerful moment. Locke embraced an effort to bring national issues into Washington. He got press and was mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate.
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However, he filled up his plate with a number of issues, that didn’t always connect with voters. He seemed unable to take on problems immediately relevant to the average Washingtonian. Worse still, he didn’t know how to work with a legislature. Locke came in frankly unready for office. He did win re-election, but stepped down after a second term filled with distractions from his national profile. Locke was big in Washington, and losing favor in Olympia. Locke delivered the Democratic response to a State of the Union address, and didn’t run for a third term. He was touted as a possible VP pick at one point, and ended up devaluing the Democratic brand in his state that his Democratic successor won election by only 8 votes.
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I’m not saying that Deval Patrick is Gary Locke. Locke was more conservative than his party, Patrick is more liberal. And Locke spent 8 years as governor, as opposed to Patrick’s 8 months. However, Locke came into the job with more experience in elected office. But Deval Patrick is much closer to Gary Locke thus far than he is to Brian Schweitzer.
I lived in Washington for most of the Locke era. He “changed his spots” a little once elected statewide; representing King County he was a fairly reliable metro-Seattle liberal. If only Norm Rice had won that gubernatorial primary in 1996……
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But as Governor, Locke was a do-nothing, completely unwilling to lift a finger to take on the right-wing forces which were using the state’s initiative process to starve the state government of revenue. (Washington has its own latter-day incarnation of Howard Jarvis, named Tim Eyman. He raises buffoonery to an art-form.)
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Part of the reason Christine Gregoire was elected so narrowly in 2004 was that many liberals perceived that her governorship would ostensibly be a 3rd Locke administration – there was little to no excitement over her. Mercifully it turned out that Gregoire has been a very active governor and has accomplished a great deal; I did not vote for her in the 2004 primary and am more than happy to say I was wrong about her.
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The expected 2008 rematch with Dino Rossi will not be as close as the first one. There will always be some “residue” from folks who just cannot believe Gregoire actually won the 2004 election, but republicans who think he’ll defeat her next year are going to be sorely disappointed.
I am surely not the only person at BMG who has been frustrated, even disappointed, with the pace of things after an election marked by grass-roots people power fed by the promise of sweeping change.
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However, this story makes me reflect for the first time on the issue of timing.
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During the election campaign, many of us watched in horror as Patrick failed to respond directly to the cynical racism of his opponents’ campaigns. It felt like a rerun of those campaigns where decent men and women were smeared and lost because they failed to respond quickly and decisively.
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(Sorry, no good links, but google “Kerry Healey Garage”–it’s not about the Lieut. Gov. cutting the ribbon on a new parking facility.)
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We were wrong. Patrick did respond, on his terms, and his timing was awesome.
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Politics is a cynical business, and I realize that here, as during the campaign, I may be guilty of optimism.
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But really, the proof of the pudding and all that. This story–which surely must have its roots in the Governor’s office–makes me want to see what will happen next.
The liberal democrat goal of total political domination has been achieved and guess what? It doesn’t work.
Now that there is no Republican governor to blame ( or any Republicans to blame for that matter as there aren’t any left), it seems that the focus is now shifting to a new boogie man… Dare I say a Democrat? Sal Dimasi?.. the new “problem”!
Can it be that Deval is in over his head and is floundering cluelessly? That tax and spend democrats are completely out of control?
It is time to reap the results of total fiscal irresponsibility.
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The dramatic and painful drop in real estate values has thousands of citizens who used to say.. “Hey, ok another tax increase so what? My house is appreciating faster than that..no problem.” suddenly now saying “Hey, I can’t afford to pay for this anymore and I’m nervous about my company moving out..
I think the worst is yet to come. As companies leave and more importantly, people leave, the tax base will implode and it will be up to the Trust fund crowd and noveau riche out of Staters to fund all the entitlements that the teachers, fire, police , state unions and worst of all, the politicians that have feathered their nests over the years.
Is it time to tell Billy Bulger that the taxpayers can’t afford his outrageous $ 235, 000 pension anymore? That Mahhhty Meehan has to give up his limosine and chaufeur as U Mass Pres ( not to mention his $300k total package)? That we can’t have $80 /hour State cops on detail sitting in their cruisers drinking coffee and reading the Herald sports page in between cell phone calls? Nah.. this is the People’s Republik. we’ll just tax all these rich capitalist swine private companies into oblivion and no problem! hey Billy! Enjoy! Deval.. ya go ahead and upgrade that Caddy..no problem…and all you State Reps..don’t worry about any DUIs ….those are just for the “little people”. Martha and her crew will squash any problems you have right after they finish f—off at their 3 hour pumpkin carving “meeting” ( closed to the public unfortunately). But then again, they worked incredibly hard to bust a little glue company and put it out of business on the big dig scam. Yup they sure made all thos e corrupt contractors pay up , didn’t they? What an incredible farce.
Hey I know this all sounds as cynical as hell but seriously, what else can be said? This state is a friggin disaster.
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Reap what you have sown…”together we can” ….good luck
Man, you must really like to type.
and whatever we have sown, at least you get to reap it too!
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But seriously, the gene pool in the Mass GOP is so depleted that Kerrey Healey was all that was left skittering around in its mud, a former school committee person and failed candidate for the legislature whose husband owns the Mass GOP and had enough money to buy her a chairwomanship, a gubernatorial nomination, and a lousy candidacy. It’s you guys who have to get on the stick. Jeepers! Talk about reaping what you sow!
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We already have the type of guy you’re looking for, but he’s already in Washington and doing a bang up job. If anyone’s rolling snake-eyes these days, it’s the Republican party.
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Mark
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there is a kernel of a point in there.
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As I’ve noted before, Barbara Anderson wasn’t nuts to say, in response to the Transportation Finance Commission’s recommendation that we raise the gas tax, reform pensions, and overhaul the police detail rules, “First do a bill with all the reforms [i.e., T pension and police details] and then let’s come back and talk about the gas tax increase.” I’d really like to see Beacon Hill step up and take on some of those tough, painful challenges that will irk powerful special interests before just increasing borrowing and/or hiking taxes on everyone else. If nothing else, it would show that the lege is actually capable of doing so. At present, I see no reason to think that they are, and that’s not a promising blueprint for dealing with the challenges to come.
there’s no opposition to make the legislature pay. There is no Republican alternative, and there’s so much power vested in the House Speaker Democratic opposition pays with its legislative life.
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Mark
In Finneran, at least we had someone we could organize and propagandize against. Not so much now.
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Generally to exert political pressure, isn’t it useful to have clear battle lines? These issues, those politicians, that party, this election. With the legislature it all feels so blurry.
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We need a better legislature but that’s going to a couple decades at this rate.
It’s tough when the CLT is right. Deval and others say that many of these reforms only nibble around the bigger problem–they are right, but they ignore the political problem–they are right, but they ignore the political benefits. And the recent measure to allow cities and towns to join the state health plan appears to be “smoke and mirror” reform. Requiring a 70% vote from the unions makes it a very high hurdle to clear and at the very least it will slow down the process and in some cases prevent it. (Not sure whether the 70% came from the Gov’s original proposal or added later…anybody know?)
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Gee, I wonder if the Leg allowed the cities and towns the ability to add meal and hotel taxes, would they require 70% of the city/town voters to approve? Its games like this that piss me off about the power structure we have.
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Why do I feel it’s about the politics of cynicism and not hope?
is right by anything but accident. Regardless of the question, the CLT’s answer is always lower taxes. It’s not like our Republican governors ever had much of an effect.
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I never expected a miracle from Patrick. But I still have hope. He has to get his game on and start learning though. If he’s smart, he’ll lay off his education proposal once his commission gets done. Make some plans, but stretch them out and delay offering any legislation. It looks like casino gambling is dead in the water. It’s hard to believe that if Patrick could get his way that we could trust his administration to handle it. So maybe he could jettison that instead. He won’t have the money to implement his education plan anyway.
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I’ve seen people on the local level suddenly find themselves in power or at least on the political stage. Their ignorance of government tends to mix with their egocentricism leading them to believe that everything has been horribly neglected and needs to be done now. It takes a while for them to realize that there are reasons things haven’t been done: they’re hard to do. By that time they’ve usually burned out or faded away.
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Mark
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Much the same could be said, on the federal level, of neoconservatives goals and results. From Jan 2001 to Jan 2007, the neocons were in complete control and look where it got us.
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Tom, maybe you should take this as a lesson that we need to work together. Democrats have always been willing to work with Republicans; the reverse cannot be said to be true.
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Of course it’s true that Democrats and Republicans both want to dominate. Both parties, in any given election, would rather see one of their own elected than somebody of the opposite party. But between elections, in the actual governance, how do they behave?
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Republicans, at least since ’95, have been all to eager to shut Democrats out. Remember Gingrich’s and Hastert’s policy of the “majority of the majority”? They did not allow anything not supported by the majority of Republican congresscritters to get out of committee. Thus anything that was supported by Democrats and 1/3 of Republicans was deemed irrelevant. Shut out.
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Pelosi and Reid have no such policy. They work with Republican moderates to get things done.
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Not only does this “work together” stuff apply on the federal and state levels, but you should take this as personal advice, Tom. It may be more fun for you to come here and spout tripe about the People’s Republik and more personal remarks about us fellow travelers on BMG, but at the end of the day where does it get you?
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Think about it, Tom.
What’s wrong with the Governor having an ambitious agenda?
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Didn’t we elect a Democratic Governor in order to set an agenda that relfects Democratic values and priorities?
I support the life science bil, the higher ed bond bill and the Governor’s initiative to put more cops on the street. I think the question of why the legislature hasn’t acted on them is a valid one and that those of us care about specific proposals/bills should reach out to legislators. Isn’t that what grassroots democracy is about?
is biting off more than you can chew.
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Mark