Keller knew Baker was getting the first question, so he made a political statement, and then asked a question.
“The last couple of years of Governor Deval Patrick’s administration have been plagued by a range of managerial failures, costing lives and millions of dollars. Including oversight of compounding pharmacies, the health connector website, the roll out of medicinal marijuana dispensaries, and tragic errors at the Department of Children and families.”
You runnin’ for office there, Keller? He continued:
“Here’s my question: What went wrong with Executive Branch management, and how will you avoid similar embarrassments on your watch?”
John Keller starts the “debate” with a 30 second pro-Baker commercial.
Please share widely!
and it’s well past time that politicians start making their inclusion in these events predicated on the hosts being actual journalists who cover politics, not ‘analysts’ like Keller and Hiller, etc.
Jon Keller, I think.
.
Who said anything about the accuracy of the premise?
While the question is legitimate the timing was suspect, the language is carefully framed, as well as the fact that it was directed first at Charlie Baker. Lost in all the hooraw about the content and the intent of this, the very first question, is the fact that the answers took, collectively, nearly 15 minutes of the hour long debate. Keller didn’t ask the second question until almost a quarter of the way into the debate.
Keller frames the failures as “managerial” (Charlie’s wheelhouse) and further frames the outcomes of these issues as ’embarrassments’ as though the real thing to be avoided is just looking bad: that is the kind of inside baseball crap he loves to spew as though the lives of citizens are just wild pitches or foul tips. Keller don’t give a spit about any of the children at DCF as much as he cares that Deval Patrick looks bad.
I don’t recall, in 2004, John Kerry getting tee-up like that about the ‘managerial’ failures of the first term of G W Bush, which term included perhaps the single most devastating managerial failure of all time. I don’t recall either Mitt Romney circa 2002 or Deval Patrick circa 2006 getting lobbed such softballs about the very real failures of the Big Dig, the ne plus ultra of management failures.
The second question, directed at Martha Coakley, was not at all a legitimate question: “when you are governor will taxes go up, go down, or stay the same?”
So, based on those two questions alone, I can’t escape the the conclusion that Charlie Bakers performance was so wooden because he was so busy with his hand up Kellers backside trying not to show his lips moving every time Kellers mouth opened…
Are these not managerial failures? Would these questions not be asked of Gov. Patrick if he were up for re-election? Is the management of government agencies not a key– THE key– function of the executive branch? Nobody is “making” the administration look bad– the administration DOES look bad, because it had a string of very public, very serious, and very embarrassing policy implementation failures. Also, last time I checked, the AG was not involved in the managerial functions of the executive branch, and could easily have called these failures what they are: failures.
In any event, you comment led me to scan over the transcripts of both Bush-Kerry debates, and they were almost entirely about Iraq, so Kerry had every opportunity to pounce on the single most devastating managerial failure of all time.
And the last Baker-Patrick debate in 2010 spent all kinds of time on the Big Dig, and Baker’s memo to Gov. Cellucci.
Lastly, if your candidate can’t parry that tax question, then your candidate needs to look for a new line of work.
Decidedly not.
In the case of the New England Compounding Center responsible for the outbreak of Fungal Meningitis, clear breaches of statutes and regulations occurred. Unless you are prepared to argue that the managerial function of the Executive of the CommonWealth extends to precognition and subsequent prosecution and arrest this is clearly not a “managerial failure’.
In the case of the DCF, the problems are systemic and budgetary. We’ve argued this at length and the friends of Charlie Super-Pac trying to make the DCF case have come up empty. Their ad has no traction because it is too blatantly false.
I have not followed the medical marijuana dispensary case enough to make any claim regarding managerial oversight.
But the Health Connector website.. yeah, that was managerial failure. So you’re at least one for four.
I guess we have different notions of what the Department of Public Health is supposed to do. If there are “clear breaches of statutes and regulations” then one would expect the regulator to, you know, notice.
Otherwise, what is the point of having regulators? Just leave it to the DA’s office for when something goes bad.
If the ball was dropped on New England Compounding Center, it was under several Republican administrations. A report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee shows that NECC was investigated by the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy between 1999 and 2006, when a consent agreement was reached.
The real problem was a regulatory loophole that did not give the FDA enough authority to regulate these pharmacies. Sen. Edward Kennedy and several Republicans attempted to remedy this in 2007 but were defeated because of intense pressure from industry groups and consumers.
Should we also mention that the Conigliaro family was a big donor to Scott Brown, who lobbied on their behalf concerning another matter before this story broke?
Yes, I think it’s smarter to stay away and avoid another attack that might backfire on the GOP.
This is a perfectly reasonable question. It is one you can expect Republicans to run on. It is one you should expect a progressive Democrat to have a good answer for. The problems Keller lists were real problems. They were real problems for which the Patrick Administration bears responsibility. As citizens, we deserve not to have problems like that recur. Any candidate for governor should have an answer here.
It’s also one of the best shots Republicans have. We should expect debate preparation should have readied Ms. Coakley for precisely this question. If she can answer it effectively, it undercuts a motivation for voting for Mr. Baker.
Well done.
It is now you, and the long-departed raj, who taught me “orthogonal.”
Even I had to look that up!
.
you have learned more than two words from this virtual political acoemeti, afflicted tho’ we be at times with magpiety, paltering, and bathos, if not brachymetropic bodewash. Surely you have read the sagacious comments of the metaphorically macrocephalic wiseacre Petr, tho’ I be pacable if you flee such logorrhea. His periphrasatic scribblings surely induce maschalephridosis even in the learned, let alone a mere abiturient.
… though dost induce a roseate and alarizin intumescence.
Makes my day.
.