Hello everyone — hoping your 4th was restful, safe, genuinely patriotic, and tank-free.
I want to play off of nopolitician’s trenchant observation regarding the latest RMV failure:
If Democrats want to take back the corner office, they must treat Charlie Baker the way the GOP treated Deval Patrick. Given that most of Patrick’s “scandals” were bogus, failure to hold Baker accountable for these failures is even worse.
… I know that no one can be the perfect executive, but that’s not what Charlie told us. That’s why he needs to pay a political price here, because that was the checking account he used to win election and re-election.
You may recall that we at BMG were not particularly forgiving to Governor Patrick regarding the failure of the state’s health insurance Connector website. No one could possibly have expected Gov. Patrick to personally know the ins and outs of contracting and running the website. But we hammered him nonetheless. Why? Because accountability is political, and he’s the guy in charge. We had to let him know it’s important.
Our esteemed BMGer is not the only one suggesting we judge Baker’s work by the Patrick standard. Matt Stout and Joshua Miller tentatively raise the same question, using “second term blues” as a kind of unavoidable structural condition, like arthritis or a worn timing-belt:
Governor Charlie Baker rode onto Beacon Hill in 2015 pledging to make state bureaucracy hum and correct his predecessor’s failures. But as he heads deeper into his fifth year in office, Baker is facing new problems — ones firmly rooted in his administration’s own mistakes or, in critics’ eyes, born from an inability to deliver on long-held promises.
…
But with a cascade of crises at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and MBTA, is this a short summer slump, or the beginning of Baker’s second-term blues?
Adrian Walker and Shirley Leung at the Globe are starting to bring the heat to Baker as well. Walker calls the RMV head’s resignation “the way Beacon Hill works … fake accountability.” That’s right.
To recount the recent failures of the executive branch under Charlie Baker:
- MBTA: You know this story. [heavy sigh]
- MassDEP: Failure to protect the communities of the South Shore by permitting the Weymouth gas compressor.
- DCF: Three children dead in DCF custody.
- RMV: Seven dead in a DUI by a driver who had multiple previous violations. RMV ignored violations sent from out of state.
- State trooper overtime scandal.
Perhaps it’s fair to give executive branch failures a taxonomy:
- Bureaucratic failure, in which a Governor can be expected to appoint good qualified staff, but can’t really be expected to know everything about the day-to-day operations (e.g. Patrick and the health Connector). Political liability: Variable — depends on the response.
- Vision/strategy failure, in which a Governor truly bears some responsibility; since the botched execution really does trace back to the Governor’s stated policy goals or ideological commitments. Political liability: High. You should have known better.
The RMV probably counts as mostly a bureaucratic failure. But as Leung points out, Baker prioritized the RMV’s convenience in the 2014 campaign, but not its role in public safety: “Nobody ever died waiting in line at the RMV,” she writes. There’s a political factor there as well.
But in the case of the MBTA, DCF, the Weymouth Compressor … these are all foreseeable policy failures. The first two are prime failures of Baker’s stubborn commitment to austerity; and the compressor dovetails nicely with Baker’s daft “combo platter” energy policy.
The deaths come amid a push to beef up child protection services at the state’s Department of Children and Families, which has struggled with high caseloads for swamped social workers, a severe lack of foster families, and archaic technology to track children in state custody.
In Weymouth, the fix seems to have been in. At the demand of various South Shore communities, Baker ordered a Health Impact Assessment from MassDEP. You want to talk about bureaucratic bungling? MassDEP lost (or suppressed) the full evidence; and then ignored it in granting a permit.
How would a decent progressive Democrat — Jay Gonzalez, say — have acted in Baker’s stead? Differently, and likely better. South Shore voters take note. There will be a new lawsuit against the compressor, which will re-litigate MassDEP’s shortcomings.
Why is Charlie Baker treated with so much more deference than Governor Patrick? I am mystified by his enduring finest-silk approval ratings, even while a good chunk of Greater Boston endures huge challenges just getting to work. Just 29% approve of his handling of the MBTA … but he gets 69% approval overall.
I don’t get it. At what point do Baker’s words come off as so much patronizing empty talk and obfuscation? This guy ain’t magic, Massachusetts.
SomervilleTom says
“Just 29% approve of his handling of the MBTA … but he gets 69% approval overall.”
“I don’t get it”
Perhaps we had higher expectations for a two-term Democratic Governor working with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Perhaps the electorate understands that Robert DeLeo is the problem with the MBTA. Charlie Baker is not responsible, just as Deval Patrick was not responsible before that.
When our overwhelmingly Democratic legislature refuses to fund the MBTA specifically and public transportation in general, we cannot then successfully point the finger at the GOP.
On a different thread, we talked about how an improved state Democratic Party might be more effective at focusing media attention on the failures of the GOP — and even on the failures of Robert DeLeo. What if the Massachusetts State Democratic Party was widely acknowledged to be the loudest political voice in the state? What if the very best media players in the state were retained by the Massachusetts Democratic Party?
When we Democrats fill the pond with muck, then we should not be surprised when the public does not blame the resulting muddy water on the Republican governor.
nopolitician says
I do appreciate the point that the state legislature is at least somewhat responsible for various things that aren’t happening, but that fact shouldn’t give a Republican governor a free pass.
When you have a method of governance with a strong executive coupled by a bicameral legislature, leadership is expected most from the strong executive. Only when the bicameral legislature opposes the direction the executive sets can you squarely blame them (or agree with them, if you oppose that direction too)
Sure, it is very easy for the Democratic (some in-name-only) legislature to be content with the current state of affairs of the state, confident that any trouble can be deflected towards “the administration” in a tacit arrangement whereby no blame will be assigned to any branch of government.
Maybe one way to break that pattern is to elect a whole new crop of legislators overnight – but that is something that I would bet my life will never happen.
So given that we aren’t going to replace the legislature wholesale, we need to focus on the corner office. Sure, Baker hasn’t exactly screwed the pooch, and that is why he has such a favorable rating – he has been essentially hiding out, proposing nothing.
Surely he is doing something Republican-ish though. If not, then we should all just suck it up and agree to keep him on.
That is what Democrats – particularly progressive Democrats – need to ferret out. What exactly is Baker doing that is silently holding us back, and what would a Democratic governor be doing to lead us forward?
Want to bust up the legislative bloc that is conservative at heart? Easiest way to do that is to have a progressive governor that proposes a lot of fundamentally good things – and then, when people like DeLeo start saying “gee, we can’t really _afford_ not to have limited registry hours because giving everyone in the state back the $3.50 they are entitled to due to the automatic income tax cut causes us to have to reduce services *somewhere*.
This state hasn’t had many new problems affecting too many people in the five years that Baker has been governor – but we have some pretty big fundamental problems. Housing prices in Boston. Lack of good jobs statewide (most growth has been in the Boston beltway). Traffic on the Pike. MBTA problems. Population loss or limited growth statewide (except in the Boston beltway). Economic segregation coupled with underfunded schools that serve the neediest children. Crumbling infrastructure. Opiod crisis. The list goes on and on.
And Charlie Baker hasn’t even tried to tackle any of those problems IN FIVE YEARS.
SomervilleTom says
Deval Patrick attempted to raise taxes on the wealthy and use the resulting revenue to significantly increase funding for the MBTA. He made the proposal in 2013. That proposal was dead on arrival at Robert DeLeo’s office. That was clearly opposing the direction the executive set.
Deval Patrick was far more progressive than Charlie Baker and than Robert DeLeo. Mr. Patrick’s progressive ideas rolled off Mr. DeLeo’s back like water from a duck.
Mr. Baker would be politically foolish to squander his political capital on changing the direction of Mr. DeLeo when Mr. Baker’s predecessor was so flagrantly rejected after trying to do just that. The most significant change that’s happened in the legislature since then is that the rank-and-file voted to remove the term limits that would have made Mr. DeLeo step down as Speaker. So Mr. DeLeo has more power now than he did in 2013.
I’m not trying to defend Charlie Baker. At the same time, complaining about Charlie Baker about the MBTA is barking up the wrong tree.
johntmay says
All jobs are “good jobs”. We just choose to justify paying crap wages to some jobs on the idea that they require skills that are not taught at a college or university. We have plenty of jobs in the Commonwealth that generate a bushel basket of money every second, but the distribution of that basket is decided by the few who own the baskets.
The only “bad job” is the one that does not pay a sustainable wage to the worker, and that is all a matter of public policy.
Regarding the 8% pay cut to mid range retail workers (yes, that again…..) on the WBUR Facebook page, a Massachusetts resident (who I assume was a Democrat), praised the $15 Minimum raise “to help those people afford rent and food” and offered that those affected by the 8% pay cut (those currently earning $40-55K a year) would simply have to “take a less extravagant vacation” to deal with the pay cut.
Yet another example of the disconnect between our well to do Democrats and the rest, as they assume that one making $55K a year in Massachusetts even has a vacation budget, let alone one that can be cut to make up for earnings shortfalls.
jconway says
Patrick rocked the boat a lot more. He was a visibly different kind of governor. Both because he was our first black governor and because he was a genuine Beacon Hill outsider who came out of nowhere like a shooting star. He had very few relationships with the media, business, and political insiders who run the state and shape public perception. He was also out front on controversial social issues like gay rights, gun control, and refugees.
Bakers motto is don’t rock the boat. He has played nicer with DeLeo, the state senate has had weaker leadership and is largely irrelevant, and the media gave him a five year free pass along with major state Democrats. The media free pass is ending and I suspect Democrats will start feeling forced to shift the blame to him for their joint failures.
We’ll see if a big name Democrat runs against him.