Jeebus, that didn’t take long. Deval Patrick hasn’t even been governor for two months, and he’s already a complete and utter joke. First it was the Cadillac SUV, then the drapes, then giving his wife a secretary on the state payroll and now he’s in Dutch for making an ill-advised phone call trying to score a loan for a company he used to serve on the board of. What a political embarrassment this guy is. Politicians are always a bit on the self-aggrandizing side, to be sure, and if you look around it’s not hard to see plenty of pols who have secured themselves, their families, and their assorted followers all manner of personal perks and luxuries. It is part of the game we play with our elected officials — we overlook some petty (and sometimes not-so-petty) self-enrichment as long as they give the appearance of working for some useful purpose and occasionally pass the spoils on down to us once in a while. In fact, people seem to prefer a degree of embellishing — anyone old enough to remember when Mike Dukakis was governor will recall that he was ridiculed for riding the T to work and mowing his own lawn. But people cannot bear a politician who sets out to gild his own lily before he does anything to merit it.
You have to admire a politician who manages to overcome the hurdle of being a minority in order to rise to power…and then becomes just as corrupt and inept as any White politician could hope to be. Of course, this being Massachusetts we’re talking about, keeping up with corrupt politicians is no easy task. Fortunately for Gov. Patrick, he appears to be prime Hall of Fame-caliber DUMB@$$ material…emphasis on DUMB@$$.
Interestingly, Patrick pulled off a succesful “I’m an outsider” campaign reminiscent of Jimmy Carter- minus the folksy twang and the peanut farm. Yes, somewhere Jane Swift is smiling. Well, OK, maybe not smiling, but certainly smirking as someone else walks down the path she blazed- a seemingly brilliant political career shot down by greed, arrogance, and stupidity…LOTS of stupidity.
You know…if this whole Governor of Massachusetts thing doesn’t work out for Patrick, perhaps he should think about moving to Texas. We’ve got our own DUMB@$$ in the Governor’s mansion in Austin; it’s not like Patrick wouldn’t fit right in.
I smell a recall petition….
