As disappointed as I’ve been in Deval Patrick—a governor who looks likely to leave office with as few positive and lasting contributions to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as that uber-opportunist, Mitt Romney—I don’t agree with some of the recent criticism leveled at his trade mission (cost: $300,000) to Israel and England.
The most common indictment of Patrick’s trip abroad expressed last week turned on the idea of unfulfilled expectations: the governor, the charges read, came home empty-handed. That might be a fair point, if it were possible to judge fairly the results of such a trip as quickly as his harshest critics seemed to do in pronouncing the trade mission a bust.
While I remain largely skeptical of pretty much any government effort at so-called “economic development,” it seemed to me unfair to damn Patrick’s junket before the governor was even back on U.S. soil. At least part of my reservation about state-sponsored (and taxpayer-funded) forms of economic development is based on my view of business networking as a nebulous process that’s not particular open nor clear to the electorate.
Moreover, whether they be scrupulously law-abiding and in the public interest or corrupt and self-serving, economic development initiatives often don’t yield clear results until long after the elected political leaders involved are beyond any sort of accountability to voters. In the case of Deval Patrick’s trade mission, it is impossible to judge what Massachusetts stands to gain in the long run, or whether or not the governor’s speculative investment in Israel was well conceived and well executed.
It’s just as silly to carp at Patrick for coming home without inking some job-creating deals in Israel, in other words, as it would be to give him credit for improving the state’s long-term economy by spending a week gripping and grinning with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.
Still, given the governor’s actions of late—beginning with his post-election statement in November that this, his second term, will be his last, and ending with his mysterious decision last week to duck the press awaiting him at the airport upon his return from Israel by way of London—he’s certainly helped drive up skepticism toward his trade mission.
My memory had placed two fairly important and memorable moments in Patrick’s recent political life within a few hours of each other, though, in fact, they came about a week apart: 1) voluminous local, state and (perhaps most important) national coverage of the Israel trip, including March 9 video of the governor with Netanyahu and Peres; and 2) the March 15 announcement that Patrick is scheduled to make an April 12 appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his new memoir, A Reason to Believe: Lessons From an Improbable Life. Fair or not, I took the two news items as proof that Patrick is already contemplating life after his governorship.
And what an improbable life it will be if he stays in politics and rises to national prominence. While Patrick has verbal skills that nearly match those of his political mentor Bill Clinton, his political instincts don’t seem very sharp at all.
Invariably, Patrick chooses to counter criticism with an ineffectual snarl that only makes matters worse. In the recent controversy, for example, the worst sting in the criticism leveled at his trade mission came with regard to Fidelity Investment’s decision to layoff 1,110 workers while Patrick was abroad.
Worse than taking the hit quietly, the governor chose to counter the criticism during the same weekend as the St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast in South Boston, where other pols teased him relentlessly about being blindsided by Fidelity. The same governor who’d lamely ducked reporters earlier in the week began talking tough, demanding a meeting with Fidelity, whose spokesperson quickly dismissed the idea that Patrick could stop the pink slips from going out: “We wouldn’t have communicated it to 1,100 employees if it wasn’t a final decision,” Fidelity’s Anne Crowley told the Boston Herald March 19.
At this point, Patrick doesn’t need to defend his role in Fidelity’s decision, even if the timing of the layoffs made him look a bit out of touch with one of the state’s major employers. If he were to try to use state resources to negotiate a better outcome with Fidelity, however, he will only arm his critics, who will be right to ask why the accommodations given to Fidelity and other mutual fund companies 15 years ago—tax breaks that cost the state nearly $150 million per year—haven’t kept the jobs here.
