Charlie Baker has written a book. The purpose of the book (according to the publisher’s description) is to demonstrate “that government can work,” a task that is “vital to ensuring the future of our democracy” and apparently requires “getting beyond politics.”
Sadly, Baker’s publisher, Harvard Business Review Press, didn’t see fit to send review copies to the MassPoliticsProfs, which is truly a shame since having recently completed our forthcoming UMass Press published book The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Reputation Meets Reality, we here at MassPoliticsProfs are in a marvelous position to provide an objective assessment of the Guv’s insights.
Having written the chapter about the history and development of the Massachusetts governorship, I feel certain that my review would be value added for readers of Governor Baker’s book (an audience no doubt partial to jargon like “value added”). And, I definitely wouldn’t have allowed the fact that he ignored my interview requests while researching my chapter to color my assessment of his book. 🙂
I am eager to compare Baker’s contribution to the literature on the Massachusetts governorship to Michael Dukakis’ book Leader-Managers in the Public Sector: Managing for Results. [Note: my assessment of this book was definitely not colored by Governor Dukakis’ extraordinary generosity. My conversations with him were enormously productive.] After I’ve read Baker’s book, I will post a comparative review. For now, I’ll share some informed speculation, some educated guesses, about the sitting governor’s scholarship…a “pre-review” if you will.
What will make Baker’s book most interesting (and potentially useful) to me is the way he characterizes Beacon Hill politics. Will he be completely honest about how legislative supremacy and top-down, special interest dominated, transactional politics and policy making at the statehouse contributed to his ability to “make government work”? Or, will he position himself as a heroic pragmatic problem solver whose political popularity and managerial acumen allowed him to transcend “politics as usual” on Beacon Hill? His subtitle, “Getting beyond politics” suggests the latter.
If Baker wrote the book for what the publisher reports as his purpose, and without an eye toward his own political future, he might and should have emphasized the policymaking upside that accompanies the political power downside of the Commonwealth’s top job. Massachusetts governors succeed by playing the political cards they are dealt and resisting the urge to bluff; by taking full advantage of the fact that a lot of good can be accomplished in the space allowed by the S.O.P.s of Massachusetts-style “politics as usual.” Many of the things that make Beacon Hill the justified target of investigative journalists, policy activists, and good government reformers (such as a remarkable lack of transparency and public accountability in the policy making process) actually help 21st century Massachusetts governors “get results” as long as they stay in their prescribed lane.
Baker didn’t “get beyond” politics so much as he has been allowed to pursue politics-adjacent endeavors when politics didn’t object. Accommodation and exploitation of this reality has fueled every significant policy making/administrative accomplishment by a Massachusetts governor in the past three decades. Ironically, having bowed out of the 2022 governor’s race, Charlie Baker increased, not decreased, his political leverage at the statehouse. Frankly, the term “lame duck” doesn’t fit particularly well with Baker’s present status…but I digress.
The real issue, the really tricky but important question that should animate Charlie Baker’s explanation of how to make Massachusetts government work is… Do the low-drama, practical and popular problem-solving benefits of coloring within the political lines at the Massachusetts Statehouse outweigh the costs of having to do so, of insider and special-interest domination of state politics and policymaking? It’s a genuinely difficult question, not a rhetorical one, and if you really want to grapple with it, I’m not particularly confident that the Guv’s book will help much. On the other hand, I am 100% confident that the MassPoliticsProfs’ forthcoming tome will be just what the doctor ordered. 😊