Via the invaluable Charlie Pierce, we learn that Deval Patrick, Mitt Romney’s successor as governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (channeling CP: God Save It!), has very helpfully stepped in and filled out that bit of Mitt’s resume that his predecessor somehow neglected to mention last week in Tampa:
“I guess the main observation I would make is that (Romney) was a lot more interested in having the job than in doing the job,” Patrick said. “We were forty-seventh in the nation in job-creation. Real wages were declining. Our roads and bridges were crumbling. We had a structural deficit that he left behind. Business taxes went up.
“He did one profoundly important thing — really profoundly important, and I say that sincerely — and that’s health-care reform, and he makes no mention of that. I can’t understand that as anything but some kind of political calculation. The presentation he’s making right now is that he was Mr. Fix-it, and I’m telling you, he didn’t fix much.
“People ask me all the time what is the real Mitt Romney? Is he a conservative? Is he a moderate? Is he a pragmatist? I think he’s an opportunist. I think he does and says things he needs to do and say to win elections and to appeal to the people in front of him.”
I love it. Perfect. Kills Romney with his friends, because heaven forfend they should dwell on the fact that his greatest accomplishment was to enact a socialist-fascist-will-sapping-dependency-inducing-anti-American-wholesale-seizing-of-the-health-care-sector-big-government-tyranny private-sector focused health care bill just like Obama’s — except for its superior women’s reproductive health provisions. And it does him no favors with everyone else, given that he did, as Deval says, botch the rest of his job.
That line “more interested in having the job than in doing the job” is going to sting too, or should — because it pretty much describes what he’d bring to the presidency. Does anyone here recall any real act Romney has persuaded you he really wants to complete as President?
Sure — he’ll loot the place, shifting the tax code in his favor; he’ll shower goodies on his friends too. That’s how he rolls. But he refuses to say anything detailed about anything he wishes to do — and by detailed I mean anything even a hint more concrete than “We’ll create the same number of jobs over the next four years a normal economy would.” (via)
And so we get the delightful prospect of seeing Romney portrayed for all to see as the man who nonchalanted his last crack at being a political CEO — and is getting hammererd for it by another guy who has had to pick up after a GOP mess — speaking sometime after 9 tonight, in case you’re keeping score at home.
I wonder why the elephant has a sad?
A personal note: I know Deval a bit. We overlapped in college and became friends after we both had the great good fortune to travel abroad on the university’s dime after graduating in a program that made sure that outgoing fellows (me) got advice and counsel from returning ones (Deval). I’m not in anything like regular contact with him now — I see him very occasionally at political events, and we hug, and that’s it — but in our twenties and early thirties I got to know him reasonably well. He’s the real deal: as smart as they come, very tough, and a good guy. I’m really looking forward to the speech tonight — when he’s on, he’s as good or better than Obama himself.
All of which is to say: this election is going to be bitter indeed. I’m scared of all the money the bad guys will throw at it. I despair on a daily basis of a media to which I once belonged with so many members that seem committed to not doing their jobs. But I look at the lineup coming this convention and I am relieved to see that a lineup the Yankees of the ’20s would have feared. We’ve got the big boppers, and they don’t.
Image: Franz Marc, Elephant, 1907