Barack Obama and Deval Patrick: Hope, Change and the Politics of Luck

In 2004, when Obama ran for the Senate in Illinois, he was the beneficiary of two opponents who flamed out in marital controversies and a Republican nominee, Alan Keyes, who lived in Maryland. This year, Patrick has not one but two opponents, and so far they are drawing mostly from the same pool of conservatives and independents. That gives him an opening to save his job -- but it's no sure thing.

A Rasmussen poll a month ago showed Patrick, 53, with just 35 percent of the vote. Republican Charlie Baker, 53, a former health insurance executive and state budget official, and independent Tim Cahill, 51, the state treasurer, were in the 20s. Obama had a 56 percent approval rating in the state, but Patrick's was 10 points lower. And liberal Massachusetts does elect Republicans, as it reminded the wider world with Sen. Scott Brown's surprise victory in January. In fact, before Patrick, the state had four GOP governors in a row.

Patrick was an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, a lawyer in private practice, and an executive at Texaco and Coca Cola before he ran for governor in 2006. He was not a politician and it showed. He racked up a number of what he calls "bruises" in his early months and years, from his $10,000 office drapes and "absurd Cadillac" to a failed proposal for casino resorts. But he's no longer a novice. He's now a seasoned leader who's weathered "the worst economy in living memory," as he called it the other day.

"It took Deval Patrick three years to learn how to become governor. In the past year he has looked like a man who has a plan and has the skills to lead the state," Jeffrey Berry, a political analyst at Tufts University, told me. He said Patrick's worst embarrassment was the "inglorious defeat" of his casino plan by a Legislature controlled by his own party. But "that was the old Deval," Berry added.

The new Deval tours the state talking about his record: ethics and pension reforms, abolition of the turnpike commission (and its "Big Dig culture of deception, patronage and waste"), more district-level control of schools, state leadership to expand the green energy and biotech industries, eliminating 2,500 state jobs, taking on unions, an economy that Moody's has declared out of recession, and a CNBC ranking as the 8^th best place in the nation to do business, up from 15^th in 2008.

The upbeat synopsis is a lesson learned. In the private sector, Patrick told me in an interview, "you just keep moving" from one project or task to the next. "In the public sector, you have to take a victory lap. You really do," he said. "You have to make sure people understand what you did, why you did it, (and) that you're getting credit for it."

Baker, running second right now to Patrick, is a Republican in the singular Massachusetts mold: He supports abortion rights and gay rights, including gay marriage, and chose a gay running-mate for lieutenant governor -- state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei. Taxes and spending are their main points of difference with Patrick, who signed a 25 percent increase in the sales tax. "Four more years of drift, overspending, tax hikes, and one-party rule on Beacon Hill will be devastating to our economy," Baker said last month when he was officially nominated.

Given Patrick's missteps and a political landscape heavily weighted against incumbents, particularly Democrats, Baker should be in better shape. But Cahill, a former Democrat who was elected statewide as treasurer, has made the race a three-way tug-of-war. Four-way if you count the Republican Governors Association, which is waging a scorched-earth media campaign against Cahill on Baker's behalf. The RGA has a whole website devoted to tearing down Cahill, calling him "like Deval Patrick, only worse." The group has run radio and TV ads charging that Cahill has been reckless with taxpayer money and given sweetheart contracts to fundraising allies.

The Cahill counteroffensive against "dishonest personal attacks" began recently with a "Good Ol' Boys" video that targets RGA chairman Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor and former national GOP chairman. "This is the Haley Barbour who said criticism of the Confederate Flag quote meant diddly," the video says. "Who made millions as a big tobacco company lobbyist." Cahill says he's been a good steward of state revenues and says donations have never influenced his decisions. "Who are you going to believe?" he asks. "The guy from Yazoo City, Mississippi, or the guy from Quincy?"

While his opponents tout their fiscal skills, Patrick is more of a feel-your-pain candidate. He recalls growing up poor (or broke, as his grandmother preferred to say, "because it's temporary") and the insights it has given him in this time of anxiety for so many people. "I know what it is like not to be certain about tomorrow," he told me, an empathy he had demonstrated moments earlier in a conversation with five jobless men in a state-financed weatherization training program.

But more and more, there's a hint of scalpel inside Patrick's soft-spoken, jokey amiability. Last week on WTKK-FM he said the Baker campaign lacked integrity and Baker "makes a lot of stuff up" (Baker said he was "a little disappointed" by the personal attacks). Patrick told me he had urged Cahill, who had earlier raised concerns about pension abuses, to be part of the reform drive -- but it didn't happen. "I guess he was planning to run for governor, so he stayed as far away from this as possible. He didn't lift a finger," Patrick said. ("Outright lying," Cahill campaign manager Adam Meldrum responded in an e-mail; he said Cahill met with a Cabinet member to share his ideas and his deputy attended meetings on reform).

The governor also managed an indirect dig at Attorney General Martha Coakley, who lost to Brown in the January Senate race. He told me the November election won't go the same way for him because "we believe in grassroots campaigning. The response I get when I'm out is frequently appreciation that I'm out, and that I'm meeting (people) where they are in every sense – physically, and emotionally as well." Left unsaid, because it didn't need to be said: Coakley famously disparaged grassroots campaigning.

It often seems that Patrick's life and work are running parallel to Obama's, albeit on a smaller scale. Last week, when Obama was dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Patrick was at the helm of his own crisis: a rupture in Boston's water system that left 2 million people without drinkable water for three days. Patrick's words sound awfully familiar when he speaks, as he often does, about doing heavy lifting for the future; the hard votes he's asked his majority Democratic Legislature to make, one after another,"bless their hearts," and their pleas for him to slow down and stop asking so much of them. Like Obama, he talks passionately about green jobs. And like Obama, he has plowed forward with his campaign promises, economy be damned.

"We have continued to deliver on the agenda that we set out when we came into office, even when the bottom started to fall out and we had a fiscal crisis on our hands," Patrick told me. That's the same attitude that sent Obama on his quest for comprehensive health reform -- a priority some key aides advised him to scrap in the teeth of the recession.

Obama and his consultants are working to help Patrick avoid Coakley's fate. He's not just running his own race, he's pioneering the next phase of the pair's political journey. He's trying to convince voters that he's made good on hope and change. And he's trying to convince them that despite the economic turmoil of the last 18 months, it is still the kind of hope and change they want.