Scot Lehigh’s op-ed in today’s Globe lays out some useful points about Governor Patrick’s tenure — and about his predecessors in office. Bottom line:
The derisive narrative about Patrick has grown stale. Yes, he’s made some clumsy blunders and yes, he’s had some rocky going with peevish legislative potentates, though that experience is hardly unique to him. Certainly his problematic poll numbers reveal the difficult spot he’s in as the election year commences.
Still, the fact of the matter is that Patrick is coming off a year or so of impressive accomplishment. He’s got a much better story to tell than most people realize. It’s a story that, properly told, should be a real asset in this year’s campaign.
Exactly so. I made a similar point in my Globe piece a couple of weeks ago:
Patrick does have an impressive list of accomplishments. He can proudly point to pension, ethics, and transportation reform, groundbreaking environmental laws, new rules for car insurance and police details (much discussed but never achieved by Patrick’s Republican predecessors), and economic policies that show Massachusetts recovering more quickly from the recession than the rest of the country.
… If Deval Patrick goes out into the communities, explains what he has achieved and how those successes are already moving Massachusetts forward, admits that he hasn’t always been perfect, has a real conversation about policy differences, and makes the case for another four years, people will listen.
The State of the State address was a good start. The proposals to take over probation and further reform the pension system were a good follow-up.
Governor: don’t let up. And don’t just do it from the Corner Office. Remember that the media want, more than anything else, a close and exciting Governor’s race. That means they need Cahill, Baker, and Mihos (if he doesn’t end up in debtor’s prison) to remain credible and competitive well into the fall of 2010. Take control of the message, and deliver it yourself, just like in 2006. Lehigh is absolutely right that the story of your governorship is “a story that, properly told, should be a real asset in this year’s campaign.” But “properly told” is the key. Only you can do that. The media won’t do it for you.
Scot Lehigh misses the point, big time. Patrick campaigned on a promise to “change the political culture on Beacon Hill.” So it’s really a piss-poor defense to cite that his predecessors made deals and/or tolerated corruption. Patrick promised voters that his administration would different. Is it really unfair to hold him to that promise?
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p>As Alan Erenhalt writes in Governing:
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p>Now Lehigh wants people to agree, “Oh it wasn’t really serious, that stuff about ‘changing the culture.’ We Globe insiders knew it all the time.” The Boston Globe: “Owned ny moguls; written by interns.”
And Patrick has made a real effort on reform and scored some real victories – pensions and ethics reforms being too of the biggest – and something resisted for years by the legislature.
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p>On the civic front he passed the Commonwealth Corps and has made things like the mass.gov website and budget much more transparent.
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p>I think the Patrick Admin has been different but some of the issues they face are systemic. When it comes to patronage politics, I think Patrick has played a pretty straight bat. The Marian Walsh affair may have played very poorly but pales in comparison to some of the doozies predecessors have pulled. Walsh is a real bright and skilled legislator in my book. And he actually pulled back from it.
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p>Patrick has had his bumps, as do all executives. But, his substantive achievements – his real focus on economic development and education, his commitment to reform and competent management of a truly awful fiscal situation – stand out.
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p>If you want culture change – start with the legislature – which defines Beacon Hill. And be realistic, cultures change slowly and only after persistent effort and outside pressure. Let’s get the Governor re-elected and after eight years we can better judge how much or little the culture of that place has changed.
the Republican party will start to put up real candidates for legislative seats, instead of letting them go unchallenged, or putting up contenders in name only. Change doesn’t come by having big names run for the top seats only.
Sorry, but passing some modest pensions and ethical reforms just doesn’t qualify as making an effective start on changing the political culture on Beacon Hill.
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p>The ironic part of Gov. Patrick’s failure to change the culture on Beacon Hill is that the legislature today stands at, perhaps, a historic low in the approval and respect of most voters. The multiple, egregious scandals involving the Big Dig, DiMasi/Cognos, Wilkerson, and Walsh, over the last four years, have only underlined the yawning need for Gov. Patrick to campaign aggressively on behalf of a set of specific, meaningful political reforms in the areas of state government contracting, state program performance management and evaluation, the high finance bond/legal/corporate revolving door appointment and government operations, and expanding transparency in the conduct of state business.
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p>The Governor still maintains significant political leverage over the legislature and retains a core of grass-roots network of supporters, albeit in reduced numbers, to help him develop and advocate on behalf of significant political reforms in these above areas of government business. Gov. Patrick should propose a set of expansive political reforms in February that address these critical areas of state government business and be prepared to use his reduced core of grass network supporters and his gubernatorial budget authority, including his line-item and holistic budgetary, to coax, cajole, and wheedle a naturally reluctant legislature to adopt these reforms before the November election.
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p>Such an initiative by a Democratic governor would represent an aggressive challenge to a moribund and readily corruptible state legislature and legislative leadership. It could also have the added political benefit in winning back the support of many Baker and Cahill Democrats and Independents who are frustrated by the insignificant progress made by Gov. Patrick in changing the political culture on Beacon Hill, the slow pace of transforming Mass. federal economic stimulus funds in public sector jobs, and by the Governor’s broken promise on securing local property tax relief for distressed homeowners in the Commonwealth.
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p>Yes, the Governor can’t change the political culture on Beacon Hill all by himself; however, through his leadership of his reform-minded grass-roots network of supporters, he still has time, during this election year, to create the political conditions on the ground that would require the legislature and our recently recommitted state Attorney General to pay heed to the demands of Bay State citizens for reform, ethics, accountability, and transparency in state government.
In an abstract moral sense, yes. But it’s kind of irrelevant to who you should vote for. That’s a question of who’s going to be the best Governor. And if Gov Patrick accomplished 1% of his promises while the other candidates are going to do 0% (or go backwards, as Tim “Swaptions Pirate of the Masspike” Cahill would), that still makes him the best available.