Boston
Early last week, the presidential campaign was rocked by the “bombshell” that Barack Obama had borrowed certain rhetorical flourishes from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign. The revelations were not universally regarded as shocking.
Anyone who was aware of the existence of Deval Patrick prior to the publication of this story could see the similarities between the Obama and Patrick campaigns. Both men ran campaigns based on hope. Both ostentatiously sought out a style that would transcend politics as usual. They shared a strategist, David Axelrod, who had penned vacuously uplifting prose for John Edwards long before Edwards became an angry populist trapped in a 28,000-square-foot mansion.
The Patrick campaign appeared to provide something of a blueprint for Obama. Patrick didn’t start his race for governor with the advantage of celebrity that Obama brought to the presidential race. Nevertheless, his message of hope resonated, and he easily defeated formidable opponents in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
If anything–and you may find this difficult to believe–the Patrick campaign was less substantive than the Obama campaign. In 2006, Massachusetts’s overwhelmingly Democratic legislature had passed Mitt Romney’s universal health care law. The economy was good. And yet Patrick won the race relying on hollow rhetoric like, “I want you to understand, I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I’m asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”
Not surprisingly, given its “double threat” status of being both vague and vapid, the line about the aspirations is one of the chestnuts that Obama has recycled during the presidential race. In November 2007, USA Today quoted Obama as saying, “But you see, I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”
The irony of both Obama and Patrick’s using that particular line is that when a candidate runs a campaign like Patrick’s in ’06 and Obama’s today, voters who give them a victory are taking a very big chance. Such candidates base their campaigns not on their policy promises (such as the Patrick campaign’s still unkept vow to get 1,000 more police officers on the Commonwealth’s mean streets), but on their personalities and leadership. If the voters ratify such a campaign, they give the candidate the kind of blank check that a victor who ran on a less frothy agenda could only dream of.
Many Americans may wonder what’s happened to Patrick since he arrived at Boston’s golden-domed state house with a mandate to be hopeful and aspirational. It turns out the governor has spent his first year in office all dressed up with no place to govern.
Given the narcissistic nature of the politics of hope, it’s unsurprising that much of the Patrick administration has revolved around the whimsy and caprice of Deval Patrick himself. Patrick came to office seeming determined to glorify himself with unprece-dented gubernatorial flights of ego. One of his initial executive decisions was to lease a brand new Cadillac in which he would be chauffeured around the state–at taxpayer expense, even though Patrick and his wife are extremely wealthy.
Mitt Romney had used the same Ford Crown Victoria for his entire four years in office. Patrick deemed Romney’s ride insufficiently opulent, and yet defended leasing the much more expensive Caddy by insisting that Ford had discontinued the Crown Victoria. Only Ford hadn’t discontinued the Crown Vic, much to the relief of police forces everywhere.
This escapade earned Patrick the nickname “Coupe Deval” from hostiles in the local media. In an attempt to make the matter go away, Patrick decided weeks after the story broke that he would pay the state the $543-a- month difference between the pedestrian Crown Vic and the more elegant Caddy. He announced his decision with characteristic politics-of-hope self-aggrandizement, saying, “I cannot in good conscience ask [state] agencies to make those [fiscal] choices without being willing to make them myself.”
Patrick was just getting warmed up. He hired a full-time scheduler for his wife, a partner at one of Boston’s biggest law firms. The scheduler who got the decidedly light task of scheduling first lady duties for a woman with an all-consuming full-time job was the female half of the husband and wife team who had coordinated Patrick’s campaign fundraising. The Commonwealth agreed to pay her $72,000 a year for her services. Patrick’s wife was the first Massachusetts first lady since Kitty Dukakis to rate her own scheduler.
Patrick also showed the world that he didn’t crave creature comforts only on the road. The Boston Globe reported on his ambitious redesign of the governor’s office back in February:
Don’t be fooled by the Globe‘s vague and contradictory wording. Originally, Patrick didn’t spend a cent on damask drapes or the other little touches. The taxpayers footed the bill. Only when the story became public did Patrick once again cut the Commonwealth a check.
As if to underscore the fact that rhetoric matters a lot more on the campaign trail than in the corner office, Patrick capped a year of embarrassments with a 9/11 reminiscence in which he labeled the attacks of that day “mean and nasty” but also “a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.”
As to the substance of the Patrick regime, there still hasn’t been any. Even the liberal Boston Globe, in a review of Patrick’s first year as governor, acknowledged that it had “been marked by initial high-profile missteps, political frustrations, and a senior staff shakeup. Most of his agenda remains stalled in the Legislature.” But it’s not as if the Patrick administration has lacked magnificent victories for the politics of hope. The Globe also reports,
Also noteworthy is the fact that Patrick now has a new signature issue, something that cuts an odd figure within the politics of hope. Patrick wants to license three resort casinos in the Commonwealth. This apparent effort to balance the budget on the backs of the gambler community may ultimately be effective, but it seems awfully cynical for a hope-monger like Patrick.
An Obama administration in Washington wouldn’t necessarily be a replay on a larger and more important stage of the stumbling Patrick regime. Obama in many ways seems like a refined and perfected version of Patrick. Where Patrick is short and doughy, Obama is tall and taut. While Patrick often sounds as if he just took a swig of helium, Obama speaks in a soothing baritone. Obama also appears to be much sharper and savvier than Patrick.
Obama may also prove to be a better chief executive than Patrick has. Then again, with no mandate from the voters to guide him on specific issues and a much more complex set of problems confronting him (not to mention his lack of management experience), he may turn out even worse. As Patrick has proven, translating hope into policy is harder than campaign speeches make it sound. Patrick’s formidable ego has dominated his first year in office, and Obama is no slouch in that regard.
In Massachusetts, Barack Obama received the endorsements of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and of course his secret sharer, Deval Patrick. Yet the Bay State turned out to be one of Hillary Clinton’s last redoubts of strength, giving her a comfortable double-digit victory. It’s worth pondering: What is it that Massachusetts Democrats have learned about the “politics of hope” that the rest of the country hasn’t?
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
