Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

What’s eating Charlie Baker?

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Brian McGrory had an incredibly perceptive column in Friday’s Boston Globe – Sour Baker a harder sell.  Watching last week’s debate, I had the same impression that McGrory had:

Why does Charlie Baker look so perpetually put upon?

When this campaign is over, he’ll have a good job regardless of the outcome – either leading the state or running something else. By any measure, his is not a particularly hard-scrabble, up-by-the-bootstraps kind of story. But there he is, scowling at everything going on around him, as if all of life is his rotten oyster.

He’s annoyed when anyone asks him a question, annoyed as he explains how the governor has never done anything right, annoyed that he has to submit himself to this unbecoming process known as a gubernatorial campaign.

One of the great things about Governor Patrick on the stump, is that he is unafraid to credit his opponents with good ideas, as he did with all his opponents in last week’s debate.  Not so with Charlie Baker:

In Baker’s surprisingly ungracious and ungenerous world, Patrick has yet to do a single constructive thing in warding off the economic woes that have buffeted the entire nation.

Seriously, it’s like running against an ex-spouse. The governor, in Baker’s view, can’t even chew right.

McGrory’s advice for Baker is spot-on:

Baker might do well to consider that it is a privilege, not a burden, to be his party’s nominee for the governorship in a state as vibrant, as diverse, and as much a part of his bones as Massachusetts. The process, traveling from Boston to the Berkshires, shouldn’t wear him down but build him up.

There is absolutely nothing about the majesty of democracy that he should find annoying – at least publicly. Beyond that, there’s nothing personal here. It’s just how we elect people.

And don’t believe just me; look at Scott Brown, Baker’s fellow Republican. The guy was as unfailingly upbeat as he was relentlessly determined, and the electorate fell head over heels. It’s called establishing a connection, and Baker has yet to do it.

Now let me get a bit partisan.  Briann McGrory got this about Baker, but no one else in the media seems to have picked it up.  I remember the media dumping all over Shannon O’Brien for her alleged smirking (who wouldn’t smirk when debating Mitt Romney?) and Al Gore for rolling his eyes at George W. Bush (who didn’t?), but the Republicans (except for George H.W. Bush looking at his watch) always seems to get a pass when their petulant personalities come through.  Kudos to Brian McGrory for recognizing this and pointing it out at least this one time.

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Comments

    • Hahhahahaha, that is so funny.  And Cashman is so right about the Western Ma thing. It is frustrating.  There’s Boston and eastern MA which ends at 495, then from 495 to the 84 interchange in Sturbridge is Western MA, then it apparently become northern Connecticut. We sure have more of a connection to Hartford than we do to Boston.  Especially when it comes to employment.

      • Did you hear about the guy from Southie who moved to Western Massachusetts?  He moved to Arlington.

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        p>Geography is relative.  Former Education Commissioner David Driscoll once held a meeting for Berkshire County superintendents.  In Marlborough.

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        p>It works both ways.  I live in Arlington, and I was attending a meeting of Berkshire County school committee members in Pittsfield with a friend from Cambridge, and someone waved his hand in our direction and said, “You people from Boston…”  We looked around for the people from Boston, and our side of the room was empty except for the two of us.

        • Was the person who referred to you as being from Boston running for Governor?

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          p>To be more serious, I take your point.  However, the reason this video resonates with those of us who live in Western Mass is that we often feel forgotten by Boston-area media and by those who work on Beacon Hill.  One would think that Charlie Baker would know that and would have prepared himself better for an interview with a Springfield reporter by at least brushing up on the boundaries of the four western counties.

    • While at Amherst, Baker was asked if he would visit Western Massachusetts as much as Deval Patrick has (Mitt Romney came West something like 3 times in 4 years). His response?

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      I don’t have a house in Western Massachusetts, This wouldn’t be a stop for me on my way to my house.

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      p>What a ridiculous response!

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      p>This post is spot-on — Baker seems to loathe Deval Patrick so much that he doesn’t want to support anything good that Patrick has done. So he’s promising to avoid Western Massachusetts since Patrick spends time here.

      • Romney in Western Mass?  HA! He never even came to Arlington! He lived three blocks from the town line, and his kid owns a condo in Arlington Center.

    • “No one has to explain to me that Western Mass goes all the way to Pittsfield.”  Or, as a friend of mine said, “No one has to tell me that the moon is in the sky.”  Sorry Charlie, the point was that Western Mass doesn’t begin in Grafton.

  3. that causes Charlie Baker to look so put upon.
    He’s the other side of the “Two Americas” John Edwards.
    In Edward’s case he made a career into a mole hill.

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    p>Think Charlie “Brown” is about to do the same thing.

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    p>Lucy….it’s time to move the football đŸ˜‰

  4. While watching the debate, I kept thinking, ‘Man, this guy is just grouchy.” I thought the top of his head was going to blow off when Gov. Patrick kept pushing him on the Big Dig.  

  5. You forgot to mention our uptight Governor who looks like he’s been “sitting on a tack all day” when he gets asked a question he doesn’t want…

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  7. but the problem is Brian McGrory.  What he thinks about a candidate or any politician has nothing to do with the candidate’s views, policies or performance.  McGrory only cares about one thing–how much personal time did the candidate give him?
       If you really want to get a nice column out of Brian McGrory, give him a one on one interview.  Or better yet, take him for a ride, or buy him an ice cream.  This is not a new phenomenom–I first noticed it in 2004 when a ride on John Kerry’s campaign bus turn McGrory into an admirer.
       And I don’t mean it as a knock on those candidates who have been smart enough to figure this out.  All I’m saying is that if Charlie Baker can get Brian McGrory to go to the Topsfield Fair with him next month and ride the Tilt-a-Whirl with him . . . .
        How can anyone take seriously a columnist who described Scott Brown’s nasty, crabbed campaign last year, when he was openly running for senate in order to join a fillibuster, as “unfailingly upbeat”?

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