Starting Line 2007

JOHN SCHNEIDER, MASSINC INTERIM PRESIDENT (MODERATOR): There’s plenty of room in the front row. Welcome to MassINC’s version of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I am the French fry guy. This is always one of our favorite events. It’s a chance to hear some sharp analysis, a few good jokes with four of the city’s wisest commentators. I thank State House News Service for cosponsoring this event, and issuesource.org, a site State House News and MassINC operates. Bob Keough is here. He was the editor of Commonwealth magazine. He’s the milk shake guy. He is the cofounder of the Starting Line series. He has joined the Patrick administration. We are going to talk about your bosses today. I hope you can take the heat. Seriously, we miss you and thank you for joining us. Our program is freewheeling. Here is a jump ball. Let’s assess the governor’s first month in office. There was a bit of a rough time before the inauguration. How are things going?

CRAIG SANDLER, STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE: Things settled down quickly in terms of the coronation story. The whole scene up there politically is kind of a mixed bag. If you go from the Herald to the Globe to the blogosphere, there are a plethora of reviews and they all conflict. There’s the deal cutting on pay raises. There is the coronation itself and the undoing of Romney policies. His impact is underplayed. He had made a lot of change in a short amount of time. The regional greenhouse gas compact. He overturned Romney’s policy on affirmative action. Tolls on the pike are gone. Immigration with State Police officers is gone. By and large they have been received kind of passively and are a little undercovered. We’ve already gotten started.

VIRGINIA BUCKINGHAM, BOSTON HERALD COLUMNIST: He’s done well in picking off the low-hanging fruit. The greenhouse gas initiative was good to come out of the gate with. Symbolically, he has done really well. I like his style, walking around the State House and getting his own sandwich and taking down the velvet rope outside his office. He is not King Patrick. I don’t think he has gotten his stride yet, that he is able to kind of wield the power that he really has. I am really surprised by the legislative pay deal, that he would do that as his first act with the Legislature instead of saying: I want to do the few things, can you help me?

JOAN VENNOCHI, BOSTON GLOBE COLUMNIST: He’s done a bad job of conveying the message. It’s not really surprising. From the moment he won the primary to Election Day he was always behind rather than ahead of the message. That has continued.

JAMES BRAUDE, NEW ENGLAND CABLE NEWS & WTKK-FM: The style thing is very, very important. People subliminally compare him to Romney. He is fortunate the other big shots on Beacon Hill – DiMasi and Travaglini – don’t even talk to the press. They stand outside the doors and deign to talk to reporters for a few minutes while Patrick is pretty accessible. He has proven himself to be a fiscal conservative. If you can buy the House and Senate for $40,000 each, that is tremendous. I actually love that story. There is a perverse part of it when you say this is pathetic. If he want to rein in the independent authorities and the buck stops here, that’s great. The inauguration is ancient history. He said he would put 1,000 cops on the streets. Now it’s over time. He said he’d cut property taxes. He promised to be open and accessible. His first budget is going to be a major moment in how far he is going to move in those directions.

SANDLER: I thought he was refreshingly candid about the pay raises.

BUCKINGHAM: I thought that was kind of unseemly.

BRAUDE: Was it unseemly when Bill Weld traded a capital gains tax cut for a pay raise?

BUCKINGHAM: It was.

VENNOCHI: To pick up on one thing you said. DiMasi and Travaglini may not talk to the press in terms of having press conferences. But that page one story that got out about the deal over the pay raise, I would guess without being part of it, happened because they talked to the press behind the scenes and outed the deal. He was refreshingly candid after the story got out ahead of him. They framed the issue, he didn’t You wrote a column that spoke to that that I thought I thought was really good about how Weld was able to manage the message, whether it’s the point of the day, and having people respond to the governor rather than having the governor respond to whoever is dropping dimes behind the scenes.

BUCKINGHAM: What he is playing for is not such a big thing. This government reform of reining in authorities, yeah that’s fine. But he’s going to figure out at the turnpike there’s not enough money to maintain the road. It does not resonate with the public. He has a different point of view of what government should be doing than the governors of the last 16 years. Pick one. He should say I want government to do this and I want to fight for it.

BRAUDE: I could not disagree more about the authority thing. People don’t understand the policy issue, but Reagan elevated government by anecdote to an art form. People know about the sick stuff. They know that people at Massport got away with this big deal and that something is going on at the turnpike. If he is able to pull this off and then is able to articulate some of the things that won’t happen anymore, I think it resonates much more than the billion-dollar projects and all these big predicaments that are far too large for people to consume.

BUCKINGHAM: I just wouldn’t confuse that for a vision.

SCHNEIDER: Ginny wrote about the need for a governor to have a big idea early on. Fiscal reality is running into campaign promises. You talked about governors with a big idea early on being successful later, and people rallying around them. What’s that big idea?

BUCKINGHAM: If I were him, I would undo some tax policy changes made over the last 16 years. I would undo welfare reform. I would undo something he does not agree with. He was elected on this mandate to bring change. I think he would be wrong but it would at least show he has a different way of governing the state. The voters asked for him to lead the state. He should try to do it.

VENNOCHI: That would be suicidal and that’s his dilemma. If he did something we think he believes, – I am not exactly sure what he believes – that would just ignite the other side and give power to the argument that he is a tax-and-spend liberal and another Dukakis. He’s got to walk this very careful line, where he is afraid to look like the liberal that liberals thought they elected.

SANDLER: There are two things that he can straddle and meet the criteria we are bandying about. One is auto insurance reform and one is health insurance reform. For Weld it was welfare reform. If he wants to show people he is a moderate and in touch with your interest, he could resurrect auto insurance, which has worked for other governors in other states. He may well be in the process of introducing the big idea. You pronounce health insurance reform broken and then you fix it. If you can spend this year doing that, you are going to get the attention of a lot of people and help a lot of people and look like the fixer and also, do Mitt Romney a little damage. You can suggest that Romney left it broke and I fixed it. I think he wants to do that anyway so that may actually really be the big thing.

BRAUDE: I think the big idea may be the small ideas. I really do. Bill Clinton, someone called him national hall monitor – the brilliance of taking these little things that matter hugely, symbolically, in people’s lives. He has to do something on property taxes and the cops even if he doesn’t achieve them right away. On health insurance, it’s not going to take long for people to realize it’s broken. What people I assume will realize is there was a plan passed with great bipartisan fanfare to help people who don’t have insurance. The bigger problem is the 90 percent of us with insurance are still seeing double-digit increases in our premiums. He can deal with the problem that Romney and Kennedy and Travaglini and DiMasi began to fix and make sure it works, but equally importantly it’s everybody else who didn’t get something from this. I don’t buy this notion that we need a grand, big project to convince people you are listening. The other thing he has done well, which matters, is convincing people he is accessible and listening. That only goes so far though. I am not saying it works for four years. Romney was out of state 219 days last year and is getting more press now in Boston than he did as governor. I think just being there is a huge, huge statement to people.

BUCKINGHAM: That is really pathetic if that is what we settle for. I am idealist, which might surprise some of you. He won this office and has one chance to remake this state in this image that a lot of people hold Massachusetts to be – the Kennedy City on the Hill. He should go for it.

BRAUDE: If he makes it safe and more affordable, and on involving people in their government, that’s not a big deal?

SANDLER: He does not have very much time to play small. He is about to alienate a lot of his base. He is going to come out with a budget based on a 3 percent increase in revenues and he didn’t run for a 3 percent increase in revenues. He said I am going to make a lot of things better. People said, yes Deval we love you. They organized, they elected him and now he is not going to be able to keep any of those promises out of the box. The reaction to the budget is going to be important within his base. There were a lot of constituencies and advocates representing very legitimate needs. They are going to be bummed out. You can’t play small and then cut everyone’s programs. It is helpful then if you pick one thing – put all your eggs in the property tax, which I would do. Or cops on the street. Or something that wouldn’t cost so much money like auto insurance reform. He can work on the budget and say I’ve got this big issue. Don’t forget how painful Clinton’s first couple of years were. Patrick could easily head down that road because when people understand what’s really going on with this budget, and they will pretty soon, and we’re not going to have more cops or lower property taxes. And he is going to eventually and pretty quickly be accountable for that.

VENNOCHI: People are more realistic than Ginny is giving them credit for. The idea of a shining City on the Hill is an overused analogy. People know to some degree what the reality is and if he gets things started in a direction where you are safer and on a different road, with better schools and government is more inclusive – and I don’t think it’s a small thing to have a governor there every day at work versus a governor that is in Iowa.

BUCKINGHAM: Just because Romney was a disaster doesn’t mean we should give Deval credit for doing his day job.

VENNOCHI: A year from now, if that’s all he can say, that would not be enough. But the first month, yeah, it makes a statement that if a guy is there, that the velvet rope is gone, that the elevator is not just for the governor.

BUCKINGHAM: The problem Deval has is he didn’t paint a clear picture in the campaign. That’s probably why he won. He was all things to all people. Contrast that with Bill Weld who was for smaller government. That was his thing. He wanted to cut government and cut taxes. People want to be led. They’ve chosen a different direction now. If he, for example, is for early education or universal pre-school, which is a laudable goal, figure out how to do it and push for it and maybe he will get it in four years.

VENNOCHI: I hate to be the one to break this to you but Bill Weld for most people is a distant memory. And the current thing people have to contrast Patrick with is Mitt Romney. Patrick is thinking about a contrast to what happened in the last four years and framing his agenda against that to some degree versus what happened in 1990.

BRAUDE: In the spirit of full disclosure, since I am talking about accessibility, on February 8th the governor will be on the radio show I do with Margery Eagan. The first Thursday of every month. Romney did the $700 million in fees. I have no idea if this budget deficit is real. I haven’t followed it that closely. The casino battle seems to me to be the huge one. I thought I had a brilliant analysis and then I read your column and realized you said it a week earlier. Dan Bosley was the chief opponent of casinos in the Legislature. The governor knew that when he picked him. I don’t buy this notion that he was not happy that his office wasn’t close enough to Deval Patrick’s. I assume he didn’t take the job because it was clear that the governor is more than thinking about casinos – he plans to do casinos. Think about this hole we are in. Think about all the promises and think about the grand vision. If he can’t do $700 million in fees and he doesn’t want to raise taxes and Travaglini said there’s no appetite for taxes – what do you do? You do what I can’t stand but apparently the majority of voters like, which is don’t let those license plates go to Connecticut – let them go to Fall River, Boston, Springfield, wherever. I am not saying it gets him a huge amount of points; it gets him a lot of dough. It’s the big battle post-budget filing. The unions are going to be lined up as supporters bigtime on the pro-casino side. A lot of liberals like me don’t like casinos. But that’s the place where he gets the money to honor the commitments. He will do what other smart governors will say – here’s what that would fund and it matters to all of you and frankly I can’t do without this money and I have mixed feelings about it.

SANDLER: There is a 50 percent probability that that will be Patrick’s legacy – bring casinos to Massachusetts. How about that?

BRAUDE: Or not.

SANDLER: It’s one of the most important things in play. Sal really is against it. It looks like we need the dough. We’re in big trouble.

SCHNEIDER: I hear without resources, you really can’t have a bid idea. What about reform? Isn’t there a reform agenda that’s just waiting to be tackled here?

SANDLER: No, not at all. Barbara Anderson has said it best and always will – the fat is marbled through state government . . .

BRAUDE: Barney Frank actually said that. Barbara probably said it subsequently.

SANDLER: Boy, there’s a juxtaposition. In any event, it is marbled through. Haven’t we been reforming since 1990. We have been reforming forever. Bill Weld said he’d get rid of 10,000 employees. Mitt Romney was going to find $1 billion in waste. We have been reforming for a very long time. It’s a tired song. It doesn’t work. They try and they try. They make some superficial changes. They are not going to balance the budget by making reforms mostly because 95 percent of it is wanted and needed and the other 5 percent is too hard to get rid of. If they could have done it by now, they would have.

BUCKINGHAM: The reform needs to come at the municipal level. I credit Sen. Havern with thinking this through. I spoke to him this week. He said we have not wanted to go there and to say to Arlington and Cambridge and Medford that there has to one regional school district, one superintendent, not 17 assistants to the assistants of the curriculum directors. We need to be much more efficient about the delivery of services at he local level. He’s right and that is a big piece to bite off that I think maybe Deval can take a look at it especially because Leslie Kirwan is from that world. She is very knowledgeable about those municipal finance issues and there is a lot there.

VENNOCHI: I don’t know. I always stick up for public schools. I don’t know that there are that many assistants left. They are cut down to the bare minimum. On the casino thing, he put his finger on it. It is going to be the big thing. You can already see headlines countering that with Lottery receipts down and how will casinos affect the Lottery and the big balance sheet in the sky.

BRAUDE: He has to find money somewhere. But can I say something about reform? I would bet Matt Amorello’s name recognition in this state is 98 percent and the notion of doing something on independent authorities does not have real power with the public, I think is not right. Secondly, maybe no one else cares about this but I think the pension system in this state is absolutely – when you have the double-dipping cop from Brockton, the Bulger’s and Marie Parente’s. The average state employee’s salary is $22,000 or $24,000 – it’s the outliers who are the problem. If one believes that stories distinguish the great communicators from the rotten communicators – the Reagans from the rest – the great stories are the Charlie Lincoln’s and sorry to those who love Bill Bulger, but I think it is scandalous what he did and the notion that he didn’t then donate the money after he won it to some college is outrageous. What is more outrageous is the Legislature has not even lifted a figure as far as I know to even look at the dam issue since every one of these abominations. Does anyone care about pension reform? We joke on the show about pension reform, about how talking about it will make sure no one is watching. I care about it in the abstract and everyone will care about it if you have the right names on the wanted posters. He probably won’t get far in the Legislature because you are asking them to do something to themselves. But it’s not a bad issue to crusade on if he does it right.

SANDLER: It does not help with the budget. We persistently spend about $800 million more each year than we take in. And the revenues are going in the wrong direction.

SCHNEIDER: People are trying to figure out the different levels of power on Beacon Hill. It’s been sixteen years since one-party rule and new relationships are being forged. What kind of relationship is developing between Gov. Patrick, Sen. Travaglini and Speaker DiMasi?

SANDLER: I hate to waffle, but it’s still too early to tell. There has not been the same kind of spirit of comity that everyone predicted since the campaign. It has its roots in Menino backing Reilly and the Boston boys not really being comfortable with Patrick entering the race. There was the Travaglini declaration that led to the rift. There have already been some surprising, unpleasant moments and I have not heard anything to suggest that people are particularly comfortable. People sound a little bit put out by: Beacon Hill is the problem even though I am here. I am talking more about the rank and file. The signals you hear are not that great. They communicate at cross messages. They’ve cancelled some leadership meetings. It’s not particularly harmonious so far and I am not surprised. We said for years that the House Speaker and Senate President would become less important if we had a Democrat in here. They are going to continue to want to hold on to as much power as they can and they are losing some, and he is really an outsider.

BUCKINGHAM: Gov. Patrick has to keep in mind that in this atmosphere it’s better to be feared than like. He likes to be liked. He’s a nice guy, but he needs to wield his power over these people. Nobody knows who Travaglini and DiMasi are. This guy just won a huge election. He can go in there and put some demands on the table and he can rally the rank and file to his side. He has that power to go around the leadership if he wants to and he ought to use it.

VENNOCHI: I don’t know the answer to this but is Travaglini leaving or not? That would affect the dynamic on Beacon Hill. I throw that out. Secondly, the gang of three would be a bad thing for Deval Patrick. So the fact that there is tension and it’s not all sunshie is probably a good thing for him.

BRAUDE: I agree with Joan completely. Does it get any better? If you are the governor, you are accused of being in the tank with the legislative leaders and they trash you. It is a dream come true. The opinion leaders get the fact. So it gives him an opportunity. The major moment is going to be when Patrick picks an issue that does resonate with the public that the legislative leadership hates. Even if he doesn’t get anywhere on it, I think the public is going to love it, assuming it’s the right issue, and I assume that will come. So I think it’s all good news for him.

SANDLER: On the House side, in a policy sense, I really think casinos are huge. There is a growing feeling that we need casinos. Right now Sal is saying clearly you’re not going to get it. He may be after something. What it is I don’t know.

VENNOCHI: Neither does he probably.

SCHNEIDER: Let’s shift gears again. On Friday we all had a chance to listen to the governor’s podcast (laughter). Has anyone listened? [A few arms went up] Ginny you had an interesting column talking about the new media. There have been some tough confrontations between the governor and the press. He took publishers to task for some of the campaign coverage. Yet this governor really promoted this idea of civic engagement.

BUCKINGHAM: We make the point at the Herald all the time that less and less people read the newspaper and watch TV news but those people are getting it off their Blackberries or their computers are still getting it basically from the same source – from reporters on the ground. Eventually it bubbles up. Deval makes a huge mistake if he doesn’t realize how he communicates with Craig and Frank Phillips and Casey Ross and others up at the State House will ultimately determine how the public at large views him. Because that is where they are going to get the information even if it’s off of their laptop. It’s not a natural thing for Deval. I don’t think he is used to the scrutiny. He didn’t like it on the campaign when he got questioned closely about things. A State House reporter, not from my paper, said he really gets pissed off when you talk about his financial stuff for example. So the reporter asks him every day about the financial stuff. Reporters try to be irritating to get at the truth, to catch people in their most unguarded moments. If he has people who are not defensive and are accessible regardless of whether the press is kicking him around on any given day, he can have the front page of the Globe and the Herald his any day he wants to.

VENNOCHI: My starting point on Starting Line is getting out the message. The bloggers did it in the campaign. Now there is a podcast nobody’s watching. Those are little pieces of the audience. The front pages and the columns are there. He has to figure out how to use them.

SANDLER: I think that’s true. I don’t think it’s that different. It hasn’t changed that much. He is just more open to everybody, including us. There is no great sense of being shut out on the part of the old media. They are figuring it out as they go through it. They are a little weak in the communications department and they are learning as they go. Everyone has seen governors figure it out on the job. There is some of that. Yeah, it’s bringing in the new media but the fact is everyone still gets most of their information from TV news. They are learning as they go.

BRAUDE: I haven’t seen a dimunition in his accessibility to the mainstream press. He is just doing alternative media as well. The speech to publishers was actually brilliant and it didn’t signal an intention at all to do anything differently. It was a statement that everyone in the public hates what we do. They need it and they hate it. He is basically saying don’t worry, it’s you and me, at the same time he is going to continue to be at least as accessible as his predecessor. That speech was purely a strategic speech, unlike the Ben LaGuer day when he legitimately angry about the article about the brother in law. He was talking to the voters in the publisher’s speech.

BUCKINGHAM: If so it was really stupid. The reaction from people I talk to at the Herald, from the publisher on down, is, you know, grow up.

VENNOCHI: Fine, everyone jumps on the media. I don’ t know that it was a brilliant strategy. I think it was kind of dishonest. Without the media, he would not have been elected. He either misread it or is dishonest about reading what happened. We all bought into the Deval Patrick revolution and crusade to some degree. Well, not all of us.

SCHNEIDER: MassINC is certainly a bipartisan organization. Let’s talk about the future of the Republican Party and the state of the party. They have in interesting agenda focused not on social issues but on quality of life and bread and butter issues. What are your thoughts and predictions for the fate of the party this year and next?

SANDLER: It depends on Deval Patrick and whether he becomes part of the gang of three. Do they have issues to organizer around? Can Peter Torkildsen raise a lot of money so they can get out a message for say Charlie Baker when they raise taxes, which they are going to do, or when things go badly, as they inevitably will. When Patrick has to be accountable for the Big Dig or when health care doesn’t work. There will be tough stretches ahead and they are going to raise taxes. But it doesn’t look very good right now. That legislative agenda is a moderate Democratic agenda. They can keep on not getting elected with that. They are refreshingly honest about admitting where they are right now. Their basic message, if you listen to Brad Jones and Richard Tisei, is we stink, but we’ll get better. It’s a starting point.

BUCKINGHAM: The first thing I would say is thank you Gov. Mitt Romney. It’s sad to say but by moving so far right on social issues, he so distanced himself from the mainstream independent-leaning Massachusetts voter that it’s going to take along time to rebuild. I don’t think we are going to see great gains ever in the Legislature. Governors have tried it for 16 years. It just doesn’t fly. Can we re-win the governorship? At some point. But if Deval plays his card right, it could be another 20 years. But it’s going to be a long slog.

VENNOCHI: They are taking the right steps to reconnect with constituencies. Based on what Deval Patrick does, there could be avenues for them to reconnect. They’ve done the right thing in the aftermath of disaster.

BRAUDE: It is a huge, huge, huge problem. It’s a problem that there is no opposition party, that people are not worried about losing their job. The reality is you act differently and perform differently. It is a moderate Democratic agenda. At least they get away from this right wing garbage that does not sell in this state. It did do great damage. I don’t have a clue about how you rebuild this thing. It is really hard when you’ve got nothing, no money and a few stars in waiting potentially. I respect Charlie Baker a lot, but if there is one more article about Charlie Baker running for every office ever created – enough already. Go do it.

SCHNEIDER: What about Curt Schilling?

BRAUDE: I would love to see it because I’d love to see him get his ass kicked. I hope he runs against John Kerry.

VENNOCHI: You don’t think the bloody sock is enough for a Senate campaign?

BRAUDE: You laugh if you are a Democrat but it’s really a problem when it’s essentially a one-party state even if you like the message. At some point, it becomes a real, real problem.

SANDLER: If you told me on Feb 1, 1988 what was going to happen in November 1990, I would have laughed you out of the room. That’s always the X factor in politics.

BUCKINGHAM: It took 20 years though to get to 1990.

SANDLER:You had Dukakis in Iowa in 1988 and universal health care, and it was like that (snapping fingers). Patrick said revenues are great, of course we can spend $380 million more. That was right after revenues were down 1 percent from December. The reason I am the most pessimistic is what the structural deficit really means over the course of time, to try to repair that problem you do it with higher taxes.

VENNOCHI: Can we talk about Romney’s presidential bid at all? I am curious about the revenue in the budget and how it affects his message on the campaign trail? It’s got to.

BUCKINGHAM: Give him credit. What he has done is masterful. Two years ago I would say it would be insane that he could win the Republican primary running as a Republican from Massachusetts. My secret plan – I always thought the guy would not run and move to Utah and start all over again and say I saved Massachusetts but now I’m back to Utah where I belong with most of my people. I mean conservatives, or Michigan – wherever he was going to go. I give him credit in a perverse way – he has successfully made this transition. He is having some bumps in the road but guys, the guy could be the Republican nominee for president.

VENNOCHI: I think he will be.

BRAUDE: I think he will be too.

SCHNEIDER: Let’s talk a little bit about the governor. He has an interesting dilemma. Who is he going to support in New Hampshire.

SANDLER: He has to be the most conflicted Democrat in Massachusetts. I am not saying it’s an unpleasant conflict. The choices are intriguing. I don’t know what his thinking is. He has not sent any clear signals. I think of this as a Clinton state. She has been here so many times. He has been here so many times. What you hear now in the building is more pro-Clinton than pro-Obama.

SCHNEIDER: Obama was here twice. They have both campaigned on his behalf.

VENNOCHI: This may be a 50-50 scenario. You see some people breaking for Obama now. Alan Solomont. Phil Johnston, in my column, says he is leaning towards Obama. It might not be quite all Clinton.

BRAUDE: I think Romney is the nominee. He is a remarkably skillful soul. I could not have believed it either. When the public finds out that Rudy Giuliani moved in with two gay guys after his divorce, that he is pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, I think he is gone in a shot. I think McCain is too old. What’s amazing to me is I say he is going to be the nominee, how stupid can the American people be? When he says he had an epiphany and all of a sudden he became anti-choice, anti-stem cell research and the gun stuff. It’s almost as ridiculous as yesterday’s thing in Boston. Can you believe that you can do this and get away with it? I think he will get away with it.

BUCKINGHAM: He has done a masterful job. I think McCain will be the nominee mostly because Republicans tend to anoint whoever is next in line. I do think it will be McCain and I don’t think the American people are that stupid ultimately. The shine of the media spotlight on what this guy is really all about is going to come through.

VENNOCHI: You used the word soul and that is one thing he lacks. But I have 100 dollars riding on him to be the nominee.

SCHNEIDER: Who is the Democratic nominee for president nationally?

SANDLER: Obama.

BUCKINGHAM: Clinton.

BRAUDE: Obama.

VENNOCHI: I think Clinton.

(A show of hands, at Sandler’s request, was roughly split between Obama and Clinton.)

SCHNEIDER: Jim is dying to talk about the Aqua Teen event.

BRAUDE: I really should control myself. Did anyone watch the 4:20 press conference? Am I the only one who thinks that the only three people who did not know what was going on were the governor, the mayor and the chief of police. Clearly at 8 o’clock you’ve got to take this thing seriously, the Sullivan Square thing. Eight hours and twenty minutes later, when virtually everyone knows what’s going on, we have a police commissioner saying we are going to bring the perpetrators to justice. It was one of the scariest outcomes, not the performance during the day but the fact that all everyone is railing against today is Turner Broadcasting, which probably has some problem here and maybe it was irresponsible. But after eight hours and with the amount we are spending on homeland security to not know the difference between an IED and a cartoon character is a really serious thing for me. Reading the papers and watching television, it’s all Turner Broadcasting all the time – all how prepared we are for the future. I don’t blame Patrick and Menino at all – they are obviously getting information from the new police commissioner. If I were him I would be moving back to Lowell this morning. I thought it was really a rank embarrassment.

SANDLER: Gov. Patrick said it wasn’t funny and I was quite stunned to hear his later retraction that in which he acknowledges that it was a little bit funny.

SCHNEIDER: One of the interesting things was how twenty-year-olds are reacting to this versus the Boomers.

SANDLER: It was broken by the blogs. TV news didn’t do you a bit of good.

AUDIENCE QUESTION (CHIP FAULKNER/CLT): Barbara’s comment about the fat was the way to get rid of the fat was to throw the meat on the grill and turn up the heat. A lot of conservative ballot questions have passed – 2 ½ and the defeat of the grad tax. Yet virtually all of the incumbents opposed to the questions get reelected. There is no connect with the voters and a stand on the issue. In other states, they are thrown out all the time. Why is that?

BRAUDE: Because there is no opposition party. You need an opponent to vote for an opponent. I believe in ballot campaigns and don’t like them disrespected. I don’t like an SJC decision coming down and then not voting on a health care constitutional amendment. Some of us who believe in gay marriage thought the Legislature had an obligation to vote. The reason there is no consequence for disregarding public voice via the ballot is because there is no opposition. It’s sad but quite simple.

VENNOCHI: It’s good question. You need a good candidate.

SANDLER: That’s why I say Torkildsen needs to raise a ton of dough. Ralph Reed is the classic example. He changed the dynamic nationwide by classically guaranteeing the tree commissioner running in Washington. If you are a Republican running for tree commissioner in Washington, we are going to be there for you. Well, that does not come cheap. In fact, Sandy Tennant in the late 80s did have what was then the radical notion of computer printouts and some money to work with and they were able to step into the breach in 1990. The reason ideology does not change into electoral victories is that nobody has ever successfully engineered the nuts and bolts at the legislative districts. You guys probably should have worked hard in ‘92 and ‘94, sort of district by district. Part of it, I always thought, was that Barbara did not align herself more powerfully with the Republicans and say here is my mailing list and here is all the support you need. It’s organization. Ask Deval Patrick. The great Republican technician is not seen in this state. They are seen in other states and nationally.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: We read today in the Globe that economic development officials are meeting with Fidelity Investment. Can you comment on the governor’s plans to add jobs?

SANDLER: Absolutely not. I have been covering the State House since 1988. No idea whatsoever what he is going to do to create jobs. Ideologically, he has a bias against the Fidelity tax break. It seems to me that yes, he wants to invest in higher education and to strengthen job training councils on the regional level but he did not to me have a compelling job creation strategy during the campaign and does not have one now, and I am certain he will by this time next spring. I will find out when you do. And in this revenue climate you really have to show how you will pay for it. And the fundamental problem continues to be affordable housing and when was the last time you heard anything constructive about that? These kids are great that come out of our college and they are taking off because they can’t afford to live here. And we sure can’t afford to do anything about affordable housing right now. So to me it looks really grim. What are they going to do that’s different from the last 15 years? I don’t know.

BUCKINGHAM: What I found very discouraging – on the side I write a policy blog on pharmaceutical and drug development issues – the guy didn’t say much about anything on the economy during the campaign. Yet the one position he held and continues to hold was backing importation, pricing issues with life sciences. That’s what we’ve got here. We have the life sciences cluster here that is our lifeblood. If he does not get behind that, I don’t see where he is going.

VENNOCHI: I don’t know what he is going to do.

BRAUDE: I have no idea. When you look at his base, the one thing you don’t really see is what he really is – a corporate lawyer. You did not hear that much in the campaign. A huge part of the guy’s heart is there. Does it translate? It did not translate for Romney even though his business experience was quite broad. Everybody says they are going to go out and recruit corporations and do it seriously, unlike their predecessor.

SANDLER: And we are not out of the loop. It’s very instructive that there is such silence on this. Perhaps they are planning to make a splash later in the year. We are going to be hearing about renewable energy and making this the renewable energy capitol of America. Our lack of knowledge in this regard is not to be misconstrued.

BRAUDE: One position he took was the Cape Wind deal. It’s a huge thing. I am on the other side of that. I say, like Ted Kennedy, we support it, but not there. Don’t ask us where. That was a tough position to take. That could be a huge front and I think he opened that front.

BUCKINGHAM: Housing and Economic Development Secretary Dan O’Connell is a superstar. He is a bright, bright guy. So he has the right person looking at it.

SANDLER: Incidentally the polling shows people very much in favor of Cape Wind.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: The Globe recently said his election has changed the mayoral prospects of the City Council. Has Patrick’s campaign and election changed the way people are likely to get elected and how much of it depends on the performance of the govenor?

SANDLER: We’re in the vacuum of having this great example set by quite a fine political team using the tools of new media. All I feel qualified to say is yes. Yeah there was Marie St. Fleur. That will always be the hidden factor in that election. If it had been Reilly-Gabrieli we might be having a different conversation today. That all said, they did do a great job and it is a new paradigm. He said he was going to involve more people and got elected civically engaging people. There will be people accomplishing successfully on a regional, citywide and neighborhood basis reaching out to Howard Dean and it’s going to work.

BUCKINGHAM: No offense, but I think it’s such a load of C-R-A-P.

SANDLER: You should say C-R-A-I-G.

BUCKINGHAM: This election came down to you had this cute, nice, smily, smart, articulate, inspirational guy versus a kind of cool, haughty, mean, you know rich woman and that is what happened. People flocked to Deval. Forget grass roots. Forget they got people engaged. They went with Deval because that’s what they saw on their TV screens and they liked what they saw.

SANDLER: But why did the Democratic primary vote go up? I think there was more juice to it than that. It does speak to the Aqua Teen story and bloggers breaking that story. Things are changing. I don’t actually disagree with you, but I think that’s the reason it wasn’t close.

BUCKINGHAM: But not everyone is Deval.

BRAUDE: I love the kind of grass roots deal. If you don’t have a guy with his skills, that’s what I’d ask the Walsh’s and the Rubin’s. He is an incredibly skillful communicator and politician. Sadly I think it doesn’t work without the right man or woman.

VENNOCHI: I agree. It did change perceptions of whether an African-American could run and win in Massachusetts. It has to send a really positive message to other candidates. It did take his magic but he took his mindset/arrogance to take on an incumbent attorney general and he was willing to take him on. Who is going to take on John Kerry? Probably someone should. There was that idea that you can ruffle the status quo and take on an incumbent. He said, so what, I am going to run for governor. There was cynicism in the media. I think the next person who does that, there will be less cynicism.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Who are the other appointees that surprised you?

SANDLER: I could not be more impressed with Leslie Kirwan. I remember talking with Romney Republicans who were just raking Patrick over the coals before that, over the names that were out there. They were saying they were going to pick someone from the loony left, that it was going to be the downfall of the administration. Leslie Kirwan is universally respected. Inside the building, that turned a lot of heads. I predict 100 percent Ginny was impressed with that.

BUCKINGHAM: I worked with her for many years. I think she is phenomenal. I was shocked by the selection. She would have been Charlie Baker’s A&F secretary had he run and won. That says everything to me. Again, she is not the governor. She will present the options and will never lie to the public. But she is not the decision maker or the decider. She is going to put stuff on the table. We won’t have a Frank Keefe or someone who is not being straight and that is a great thing.

BRAUDE: I love Frank Keefe, but putting that aside I could not name half the members of the Cabinet, I am embarrassed to say.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: It hurts so much to hear you bash Mitt Romney Ginny. It’s breaking my heart. What should be the fallout if Patrick does not fulfill his campaign promises?

BRAUDE: The narrative of the budget will probably say after X number of years we will fulfill our pledge on cops. The question is what does he do about the property tax. In terms of giving Leslie Kirwan power, Kirwan announced we are going to stabilize local aid but we are not going to be able to cut property taxes right away. I don’t have any idea what he is going to do on that front. They have to make sure that that is the path, even if it’s four years. Or the fallout will be quite dramatic. He will get to a thousand cops by four years.

BUCKINGHAM: There is no fallout unless he raises taxes. No one gives a hoot about 1,000 cops on the street. If he raises taxes he is in big trouble.

QUESTION: Would you include the local option tax?

BUCKINGHAM: Yes, I think that is a disaster for him. And it sounds like he is going that way.

SANDLER: Remember, the Legislature passes the budget and they have their own versions of it. Over time the fallout of having the structural deficit – the need to get a handle on it or do without – is going to be gigantic and highly negative. They are going to need to be extremely creative and forthright to weather that and there is better than a 50-50 chance that it’ll cost him the election.

BUCKINGHAM: The local option thing should be called the hamburger tax and that’s why it’s a disaster.

VENNOCHI: What if the local municipal elected officials want it?

BUCKINGHAM: What about the voters? They don’t want to pay extra for a hamburger. It’s stupid.

BRAUDE: A local option tax is a local option tax. Local option or not, it’s an opening for the Republicans. I would play up that Deval Patrick raises taxes and broke his pledge, even if it’s not technically true.

SANDLER: It’s going to get very messy.

SCHNEIDER: A year from now what will we be talking about?

SANDLER: Well, nothing but pestilence and doom obviously. You can continue to patch things over for a while. They did it with diverting the rainy day fund. The economy is in quite good shape despite whatever kind of shakiness it is experiencing internally. You can certainly paper over $800 million for a year, which they may wish to do politically. We are going to have positive surprises on the policy front, just as those appointments surprised us. I am not so sure the dark days I have predicted will be upon us when we next reconvene. The two most interesting points are Cape Wind and casinos. And don’t forget about gay marriage. That could be coming up sooner than we think if they think that they can win that issue.

BUCKINGHAM: I hope we are talking about an administration that has hit its stride and a guy who had bumps in the beginning and has risen to the leadership challenge and has put out something big and bold that he is fighting like hell for.

BRAUDE: It’ll be: it’s ten months to go and we know the two nominees already. That’s what we will be talking about.