Photo of the Day, November 20, 2009: Red Leaf
Boston Seventh Strangest City in U.S.
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Last week Governor Deval Patrick took "personal days" as the casino plan he had been pitching for six months was going down in flames. Today the Associated Press reveals that during that time Patrick was out of state pitching an autobiography to New York publishers.
This is another public relations blunder for the governor, whose political problems were laid out on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. Though the debate over casinos was already clearly stacked against Patrick, leaving for personal business matters during the biggest legislative moment of his short career is terrible messaging. How committed is Patrick to the Commonwealth?
The Patrick-Barack Obama connection has been much discussed, and Patrick is proposing to write something along the lines of "`Barack Obama's first book'"--Dreams from My Father.
We'd be happy to read his memoirs--Milton Academy sounds like an interesting place--but when does he plan on writing them? We've had an absentee governor with bigger things in mind recently, but running the Bay State well should be time-consuming. Losing his next election would free up some space in Patrick's schedule.
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I'm not sure what Patrick was supposed to do about the casino legislation that he knew wasn't going to pass, stay in Boston and have a temper tantrum? Tell the press, yet again, that the legislature was making a mistake? OK, so he went all the way to New York City, a couple hours away. The idea that Patrick is some kind of absentee governor a la Romney is a joke.
I don't know what else could have been done (you're right, probably nothing), but as a public servant it's bad messaging to be selling your memoirs in Manhattan while your most high-profile policy proposal is being defeated in Boston. Patrick's long-term career is dependent on being successful here (Life of Deval: Escaping South Side Poverty to Become Unproductive Governor isn't going to sell a lot of copies.)