Romney applies himself…..again

If the four GOP candidates were running for legislator-in-chief, Rick Santorum would have won last night’s debate. But they are not, and, coming off three caucus and one primary victories plus a surge in the polls, former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum failed to present himself as commander-in-chief.

 He got mired in the arcana of Senate rules and legislative deal making to explain votes he had made. In a Tea Party era, where compromise is anathema, his willingness to “take one for the team,” which he did in voting for No Child Left Behind, is not unattractive. But his efforts to differentiate “good earmarks” from “bad earmarks” got him deeper in the legislative soup. Such explainers don’t play when the office sought depends on executive leadership. His contorted explanation of his support for Title X funding reminded me of John Kerry’s having voting for a bill before voting against it.

There’s a legislative logic to both, but hard to convey in a presidential debate format that demands simpler explanations.

Santorum’s best moment came when he attacked Mitt Romney for taking credit for balancing four budgets in Massachusetts, when that is required by state Constitution. Santorum got off the best line of the evening by noting that Mike Dukakis had balanced 12 budgets in Massachusetts, but that, he asserted, doesn’t make Dukakis qualified to be President. Surprisingly, Santorum failed to focus on Romney’s many flip-flops (or evolving positions), which are the heart of his vulnerability.

Romney came prepared to reassert himself as front-runner. His delivery was crisp, “fact packed,” and he seemed to have toned down his glassy, disingenuous smile. But the New York Times had a field day fact-checking Romney’s erroneous assertions, which he nevertheless delivered with aplomb.

It was the mostly affable elder statesman version of Newt Gingrich who showed up last night, rather than the angry, nasty individual who erupted, especially against the “liberal elite media,” in earlier debates. He did slip in one despicable remark about Obama and infanticide.  Overall, however, it was a low impact night for Newt.

Ron Paul was not even part of the debate for the first 15 minutes, occasionally got off a crowd-pleasing one liner, but is largely irrelevant, except as Romney’s corner man in attacking Santorum.

CNN's John King never mentioned the word housing, despite the severity of the crisis in Arizona.  Local voters might have wanted to hear where the candidates stood on that.

Tuesday’s results in Michigan and Arizona will show to what extent Romney’s performance – plus his lavish spending – will succeed in regaining his path toward inevitable nomination. It’s all very unexciting. He approaches the primary process as a problem-solving businessman. His passion is unconvincing. In their excellent book, The Real Romney, Globe writers Scott Helman and Michael Kranish are thorough in probing what makes him tick. It’s well worth the read, a complement to what has unfolded in the debates, the last scheduled one having been last night’s. The last chapter has yet to be written.

I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts in the comments section below.

Will the Santorum-i-zation of Scott Brown work in Massachusetts?

A new Suffolk University/Channel 7 poll puts Senator Scott Brown nine points ahead of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Brown. But what will be the impact on the Massachusetts electorate of his recent effort to emulate Rick Santorum in the debate about exempting contraception in required health insurance plans?

The Obama Administration appeared to have put a damper on the controversy ignited by the issuance of regulations requiring Catholic hospitals and universities to offer contraception in their health insurance plans provided to employees, many of whom are not Catholic. The compromise shifts the cost from the employers to the insurers, who would save money in the long run. Sister Carol Keehan, D.C., president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, who had supported Obamacare, reportedly accepts the compromise. (The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does not.) 

The Respect for Conscience Act filed by Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, which Brown co-sponsors, would go even farther than what Santorum is embracing. The proposal -, which, as Yvonne Abraham has noted, is obviously an attempt to gut the Affordable Health Care Act,- would go beyond allowing Catholic organizations to opt out of contraception coverage. The Blunt bill would allow any employer to opt out for virtually any “moral conviction.”

So, if a woman works for a company dominated by Christian Scientists, could that company offer coverage that insures only those processes that claim to cure with prayer? As Herald columnist Margery Eagan points out, “The possibilities are endless.” The bill is so open-ended that it could conceivably permit employers’ excluding coverage for lifestyle choices, not ideal body mass indices, single motherhood or even pre-existing conditions.

Scott Brown is a personally likable guy. (So, too, were George W. Bush and Dan Quayle.) When Brown started in the Senate, he voted with the rigidly right Republican leadership 90 percent of the time. This was far higher than moderate Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who voted with their leadership 54%-56%. More recently, now running for reelection, he seems to be voting more in line with his Maine colleagues, unless, warns Lowell Sun columnist Michael Goldman, you count all-important procedural votes. Then, he calculates, Brown has been voting 74% with the GOP leadership.

Brown’s strongest selling point is that, if Republicans end up controlling the Senate (and the House), it would be good to have at least one Republican in the state’s delegation. The question Massachusetts voters have to ask themselves is what kind of senator would he be? How high a price are voters willing to pay? If “good guy” Scott Brown has another six years to serve, will he revert to his comfort zone and line up with his party leadership a preponderance of the time? Siding with Rick Santorum on the health care bill seems to be a good clue of what might lie ahead in Scott Brown’s play book.

I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts in the comments section below.

Obama budget D.O.A.

How many trees died so the Government Printing Office could distribute all those never-to-be-implemented budget proposals put out earlier this week by the Obama Administration. Let’s face it. The Obama budget is basically dead on arrival. The Republicans are loath to agree on proposals – like infrastructure rebuilding, essential to undergird the economy - that they might have supported in the past, because it is an election year. Still less are they going to embrace items, expanded education funding, for example, that they would normally have shied away from in the first place. The President knows all this. What he has put forward is a campaign document, not dissimilar to the purpose of those government-funded newsletters that members of Congress put out on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.


He seems intent on tackling the unfairness of the tax system (e.g different rates for dividends and ordinary income) and letting at least some of the Bush tax cuts go away. That plays to his base, but he knows there’s no support in Congress for raising taxes on families earning $250,000 a year. He might have gotten more traction if the cut-off were $1 million a year, but that wouldn’t have generated as much revenue. Surely, if the Bush tax cuts were eliminated in their entirety, it would have a significant impact on the deficit, but few are advocating the long-term benefits of shared sacrifice . Given that his tax increase proposals won’t go through, the President also ensures the deficit will again be well over $1 trillion the next fiscal year, breaking his earlier naive pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

The plan claims to cut $4milion from the deficit over the next decade, but it’s festooned with accounting gimmicks, rosy forecasts and unwarranted economic assumptions.  As I indicated after the State-of-the-Union speech, a major part of Obama’s plan to pay for new initiatives is to “take the money we will no longer be spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, use half to reduce the deficit and the other half to do nation building here at home.” The fallacy here is that we have been deficit-financing the two wars. Not making the huge expenditures there doesn’t translate into money in the bank. The money was never there in the first place, and, much as I wish him success in this and other endeavors, I am insulted that he thinks we will fall for this.

It seems that after a feckless couple of years of waffling, and trying inartfully to court a myopic and hypocritrical Congress, the President finally has decided that the time for austerity is not now and that job creation trumps deficit reduction. Reading with concern the news from Europe, I wish him and our country well.

It’s all a mess and not likely to be less so until at least after the election. Then Congress will find itself on the brink of the sequestration agreed to in last year’s debt ceiling impasse, with debt ceiling, the sequel also just over the horizon. It’s no wonder that people are turned off by politics and have such contempt for the shell games that everyone in Washington insists on playing.

I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts in the comments section below.

Susan Komen Foundation blunder makes it a net loser

The Susan G. Komen Foundation’s move to eliminate its financial support of Planned Parenthood is a real losing proposition, for the people being served and for the organization’s reputation. Planned Parenthood was threatened with the loss of nearly $700,000 to expand breast examinations, and the Komen Foundation lost a huge amount of credibility.

This blunder shows that Komen Foundation executives are craven, dishonest, naïve and short-sighted. Craven, because their new policy [not providing grants to any non-profit under investigation] seemed to cave to a recent pro-life hire  and selected donors already working with the legislator who triggered this investigation of Planned Parenthood. Dishonest, because they said that abortion politics had nothing to do with their decision. Naïve, because Planned Parenthood is almost always being investigated by Congress to ensure that no federal dollars are going for abortions either here or abroad. And short-sighted, because of the potential for immediate and damaging backlash.

Donations to Planned Parenthood immediately shot up, including a quarter of a million dollars from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Many donors to the Susan G. Komen fund said they’d give elsewhere.

Now the Susan G. Komen fund, apparently realizing the blatant stupidity of its move,  has just announced that it will “amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.” The announcement didn’t indicate what would be the basis of any future denials of Planned Parenthood requests for funding support.

Both organizations are concerned with women’s health, and it made sense for the Susan G. Komen to expand breast cancer screenings by tapping into the Planned Parenthood population of women seeking birth control, abortion and related women’s health services. There is clear complementarity in their missions. But,if you’re concerned about breast cancer, there are many other places to donate your money to besides the Susan G. Komen fund. And Planned Parenthood stands virtually alone in defending women’s reproductive rights. No doubt now about which of these two organizations is a better charitable investment.

I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts in the comments section below.

Kevin White: the mayor who wanted more

No matter how much he accomplished, the late Boston Mayor Kevin White always wanted something more. His legacy is huge, from having kept the city from going up in flames following the Martin Luther King assassination, to continuing dramatically the urban renewal started under his predecessor John Collins. Look at the Quincy Market, Copley Place, Park Plaza, the Charlestown Navy Yard and more.

From a journalist’s perspective, he was very good copy, especially because in those days the Boston City Council and its colorful cast of characters were more assertive than today’s lot. And the Council and he were always at odds (except for councilor Larry DiCara.) Orchestrating big events like the Bicentennial, he wanted  people to think of Boston as a world class city, and always saw himself playing on a larger stage.

In 1970, he ran unsuccessfully for governor and stayed on as mayor. He contracted Potomac Fever in July of 1972 when George McGovern toyed with putting White on the ticket as Vice President. While White was kept hanging by a telephone, the idea was scotched by the Massachusetts delegation and Senator Ted Kennedy. Among those denying White the prize were the late Harvard economist J. Kenneth Galbraith and Congressman Bob Drinan, pictured here at the convention, who conveyed to their presidential nominee the strong anti-Kevin White feelings of his home state delegation.

The longing didn’t go away. And let’s face it: White looked even better for not having been tarnished by being part of the disastrous McGovern ticket in 1972. In 1974, He was named one of three co-chairmen of a Democratic National Committee Election Committee, a national platform and an opportunity to travel the country. (The committee included lame duck Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, whom White dismissed as an intellectual and politically savvy inferior.) But then came White’s own albatross: busing, and the question of whether he could even win reelection as mayor.

For a while in 1975, White considered running not just as a favorite son in Massachusetts, but as a credible candidate in the New Hampshire primary. He hosted the national media at the Parkman House. He courted the presidential contenders right up to the New York nominating convention. How it must have stuck in his craw that Carter won the nomination and the Presidency!

In a 1976 article written for the Boston Phoenix by Jim Barron and me, a close aide to White observed, “The presidential bug is like syphilis. It’s a social disease. Once you contract it, you can’t get it out of your blood.” After he was passed over for vice president in 1972, and passed up opportunities to organize and run for president in 1976, he still angled for a spot for vice-president. But with Carter the outsider atop the ticket, there was no way that a mayor was going to be selected for number two.

Reporters covering him during the ‘70’s noted his restlessness, his seemingly preferring Parkman House dinners with national figures to meetings in Boston’s troubled neighborhoods. By 1980, they were calling him “Kevin Deluxe” and describing his “Olympian lifestyle.” According to writer Michael Ryan, late City Councilman Fred Langone likened him to Julius Caesar. But, from the Tall Ships to entertainment in neighborhood parks, he made the people dream larger as well and even to feel better about themselves.

In my last formal interview with him, in the plush Oriental-carpeted office at Boston University where BU President John Silber had provided him a post-mayoral home, he was still Hamlet on the Charles. Standing before the window, gazing out at the Charles River, with a furrowed brow, pondering that unnamed something more.

In 1994, at an overflow reception in the Copley Plaza ballroom for the First International Congress on the Atlantic Rim, celebrating Boston’s emerging leadership as an international city, White stood quietly to the side, an attendee, a spiritual father perhaps of the idea, but no longer an active player.

In the end, Kevin Hagan White will be remembered not only by how he changed the physical landscape of downtown Boston but by the generation of young, idealistic activists who worked for him in City Hall and went on to become the next generation of political and business leaders, leaving their own imprint locally and nationally. People like BRA chief Peter Meade, p.r. powerhouses Micho Spring and George Regan, Revenue Commission Ira Jackson (who left his mark on BankBoston and across academia), Congressman Barney Frank, Transportation Secretary and father of The Big Dig Fred Salvucci, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, Boston Foundation President Paul Grogan and many others. His legacy is huge, even if he never got to move from the Charles to the Potomac.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
1972 convention photo by Jim Barron

Patrick follows sober state-of-the-state address with focused $32 billion budget

Governor Deval Patrick yesterday proposed a state budget to back up the state-of-the-state address he delivered on Monday. That speech was competently, if not soaringly, delivered, and urged a modest, focused agenda, which the budget seems geared to implement. His list of state accomplishments was gratifying: students who lead the nation in test results; greatest percentage covered by health insurance; moving from 47th in job creation to 5th; greatest drop in automobile insurance costs. Other accomplishments in clean energy, pension reform, moving families out of shelters.

Some of those votes were uncomfortable for the legislature, he acknowledged. There’s a lot still to be done. MBTA indebtedness, wrong-doing in the probation system, the messy, possibly illegal relationship between his lieutenant governor and former Chelsea Housing Authority heavy Michael McLaughlin – all must be uncomfortable for the Governor. He did not mention them.

Even while he was congratulating legislators on their shared accomplishments, he was setting forth three areas most in need of work: dealing with the long-term unemployed, managing the costs of health insurance, and crime. He also wants to fill the jobs gap by closing the skills gap, working with community colleges and, in the process, controlling that system much more centrally and partnering with business in the process. In that, he’ll have to win over a group of community college presidents very comfortable with their current powers. Plus, it’s unclear whether more centralization will bring any benefits to a system that will rely on collaboration between community colleges and local businesses.

In the area of health costs, he wants nothing less than to end the fee-for-service system, reimbursing on the basis of quality care. Insurers and providers are already moving in this direction. It will be interesting to see where the state injects itself into the process. He also breathed words once unimaginable for an elected Democrat, “medical malpractice reform.”

His calls for reforming mandatory sentencing and punishment of habitual offenders have been around for years, as ways of reforming the reforms of yesteryear. These issues are cyclical, but it will be fascinating to see if he can make a dent in the challenge. And how big a dent will be meaningful? His previous “success” in replacing police details with civilian flaggers seems, unfortunately, to have yielded little more than tokenism.

The Governor’s budget would increase by three percent, which he justifies by citing the need to invest more in education. He would eliminate the sales tax exemption on candy and soda, while hiking certain tobacco taxes. All this is a way of investing in health, but will fall most heavily on those with the lowest incomes.

He proposes closing a state hospital and a prison, which would eliminate 400 state jobs. See the Mass. Budget and Policy Center for more details.  But can you really close a prison before you change the sentencing structure?

Typically, a Governor’s budget proposal is either dead on arrival in the legislature or, at most, the first step in a long conversation. This one will be no different.

Where the President’s state-of-the union speech was aspirational and occasionally inspiring, a campaign tract more than a blueprint for action, the Governor was modest, grounded and workmanlike, the voice of a politician rounding out his second term rather than reaching for one.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

State-of-the-Union speech paints vision and ignores political realities

State-of-the-union speeches are supposed to be inspirational, and last night’s by President Obama achieved that goal. It certainly spoke to his Democratic base and evoked a vision of what those center and left-of-center want their country to be and do. The problem is that the President glided over the lessons of the 2011 annus horribilis and even 2010, when many of the ideas he floated last night were soundly rejected.

It’s fine that he portrayed his values, including a more active government role in job creation, supporting renewable energy and eliminating oil subsidies, growing the manufacturing sector, expanding the federal role in financing higher education. But he has to know that it’s likely that little will happen in a Presidential election year, that any of the larger items of his program won’t go through either branch of Congress now that it’s Republican-controlled, or at least dominated by Republican vetoes. Heck, he couldn’t get some of those same ideas through Congress when both branches were Democratic. On many issues, regional politics trumped partisan affiliation. Energy producers on both sides of the aisle are opposed to ending subsidies. And the Republicans see ending subsidies to oil companies as a tax increase, and everyone knows they reflexively refuse to support any tax increase.

Obama’s pitch to reform the tax code and the unfairness of the system will figure prominently as the Presidential campaign proceeds, and there are certainly many inequities that need to be addressed. But fairness for some means an increase for the wealthy, and, again, that’s not going to sail in the current political environment. It’s reassuring that the President is willing to take the criticisms of “class warfare” head on. (Who knew such inequities would also figure prominently in the GOP primaries?)

Obama didn’t just glide over the hugely negative political realities in Washington. He indulged in a kind of magical thinking worthy of Latin American authors. A major part of his approach to financing his programs was to take the money we will no longer be spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, use half to reduce the deficit and the other half to do “nation building here at home.” The fallacy here is that we have been deficit-financing the two wars. Not making the huge expenditures there doesn’t translate into money in the bank. The money was never there in the first place. Those wars plus the Bush tax cuts and an underfunded Medicare Part D together account for the expansion of the federal debt. So in the real world, rhetoric aside, there’s no net savings here to be achieved.

In the end, however, the State-of-the-Union address was an opportunity to paint a vision of values, if not a portrait of political possibilities. And, if the President had watered down that vision, cravenly bending to the negative atmosphere in Washington, he would have unacceptably moved the needle on where potential compromise might start and sold out the dreams of his most ardent supporters before the 2012 game had even begun.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.