Like president like governor

Article 2-22-10

Talk is cheap with Patrick, Obama

by Michael Graham
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Monday, Feb. 22. 2010

It turns out they really were “just words.”

Remember the stereophonic speeches from Deval Patrick and Barack Obama during their campaigns? In 2006, Patrick complained of being “dismissed” because “all I have to offer is words, just words.” A few months later, candidate Obama said “don’t tell me words don’t matter . . . ‘I have a dream’ - just words?”

Now we’re into the second year of the Obama presidency and the final year (we hope) of the Patrick governorship, and what do we have to show for it?

Words. Empty ones, too.

The president’s very first act in office was to declare Guantanamo Bay would be closed by now. Just weeks ago he and his attorney general insisted that the 9/11 terrorists would receive civilian trials in New York City.

Just words. Khalid Sheik Mohammed will absolutely not be tried in New York, and now Eric Holder says “whatever forum” will work, including a Bush-style military tribunal.

And I’ve got $20 that says KSM will get that military trial at Gitmo.

Candidate Obama promised no lobbyists in the White House. To hold health care negotiations on C-SPAN. And remember: “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: Not one single dime.”

That was then. Now President Obama is “agnostic” about raising taxes on families earning less than $250,000. The real question is whether he was ever a true believer when he promised he wouldn’t.

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi observed, “There are a number of things [Obama] was for on the campaign trail.”

She’s not the only liberal to notice. On the issue of clean coal, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller said “He’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

Ya think?

National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson observed recently that “the truth is a precious commodity.”

“At some point - I think it was around mid-January - the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, ‘I don’t trust anything that this guy says,’ ” Hanson wrote.

For the governor, the distance between words and reality is even greater. As a candidate, he promised property tax cuts. We got sales tax hikes. He promised not to raise gas taxes, then apologized to his fellow liberals for failing to do just that.

Patrick promised reform, but we’ve got bigger bureaucracies, more spending and payrolls still padded with six-figure salaries.

But neither of these men was elected for his policies in the first place. They were elected for their symbolism, for the political theater, for the belief that they could use words to effect change in ways other pols could not.

And that’s where they’ve both been the biggest flopperoos.

When Irian protesters were being killed,where was Obama’s soaring rhetoric in defense of freedom?

The same on a smaller scale here in Massachusetts, where Patrick has rarely used the bully pulpit against Beacon Hill’s bullies. The public wants to hear a leader voice their concerns on spending, pension abuse, elderly drivers, etc. Patrick’s silence isn’t quite deafening, but it’s glaring.

Have the voters already tuned out all the “just words”? Or is it that these two men simply don’t have anything left to say worth hearing?