Charlie Baker, You're No Policy Wonk

I know policy wonks.  Policy wonks are friends of mine.  Charlie Baker, you’re no policy wonk.  Charlie Baker, the new and improved Charlie Baker, is hoping Massachusetts voters forget all about the old Charlie Baker: the socially awkward, people-who-disagree-with-me-just-aren’t-smart-enough-to-see-I’m-right Charlie Baker.  This is a guy who said at the beginning of his last campaign that it’s hard for him to go into a diner and just walk up to people and start a conversation.  The old Charlie Baker once made Scott Brown embarrassed just to be on the same stage with him.  Now that Scott Brown is leaving Massachusetts, Charlie Baker must be relieved and it shows.  This year’s model is a huge improvement.  This Charlie Baker is such a nice guy, so relaxed, so open-minded, you have to wonder if when he tells his staff he’s going to the Berkshires, it isn’t to campaign, it’s to take meditation classes at the Kripalu Center.  Good for him!

To tell you the truth, I kinda get the appeal of the new Charlie Baker. The Republicans had to run a credible candidate, and Charlie Baker is it: he’s smart, he’s experienced, and as Republicans go he’s not completely off the wall.  If I drank beer, I’d want to have a beer with him.  We could talk policy!  That’s why I’m so disappointed that he’s turning out not to be a real policy wonk, even though he still likes to say he is.  Why, Santy Clause why, if he’s running on what he purports to be his superior understanding of policy, is his campaign so thin on issues, especially the ones he considers most important: jobs and the economy.  Check out his campaign website. http://www.CharlieBaker2014.com.  You’ll find his bio, a page to make donations, a place to volunteer to get other people to make donations, and a blog with media appearances and a very nice piece about his mother.  Where is the policy?  Where are his positions?  What is he waiting for?  Surely he must know by now where he stands on things.

Certainly not this one: casinos.  Charlie Baker says we might be better off if we started off with just one casino and see how it goes.  Sounds reasonable.  So will he vote to repeal the casino deal?  He’ll consider it.  Apparently the new Charlie Baker will consider everything.  “Nothing’s off the table,” he likes to say.  But after all the years of study, all the working papers, all the other states who’ve had casinos, Charlie Baker still doesn’t know whether casinos are a good idea?  Three might be good, or they might not.  Two might be better than one, or worse than one.  Four might be worse than two.  You see my point?  Charlie Baker just doesn’t know.  To be fair, having a candidate admit he doesn’t know something is like spring in January.  It’s just that, given his intelligence and experience, shouldn’t he have figured this out by now?  When does he think he’ll figure this out? After the first casino is built?  After the second?  After the fifth?

Here’s another position he’s taken.  He cares about the homeless.  Now this one really worries me.  Everyone I know cares about the homeless.  Caring about the homeless is the norm where I come from, and I honestly can’t think of anyone who doesn’t care about the homeless.  So what kind of people is Charlie Baker hanging out with if he thinks it’s special to care about the homeless?  But what really worries me is this: Charlie Baker’s solution.  While most people would think that the answer to homelessness is more homes, Charlie Baker thinks the solution is. . . interagency cooperation.  Has no one thought of this before?  If only government agencies charged with the care of the homeless cooperated with one another, all the homeless people would have a roof over their heads.

No?  Then perhaps Charlie Baker needs to tell us how many homeless people will have homes once he’s in the governor’s office and the new agency heads start talking to each other. Under the Baker plan, agencies will be encouraged to “deploy” their resources, and more money will be given to relatives of the homeless so they can take them in.  (There go all the votes of people with homeless relatives.)  He says he wants to increase access to affordable housing, but he doesn’t say how.  How many homeless people will be left over after that?  To his credit, the website says there are 44,000 homeless children attending Massachusetts public schools.  After we improve interagency cooperation, how many will we have left?  10,000?  20,000?  What’s an acceptable number for Charlie Baker?  With 10,000 or 20,000 homeless schoolchildren left over, we might still need some revenue to help all the homeless leftover, the ones that average, ordinary people care about.

Which brings us to jobs, since if everyone who wanted a decent job had one we’d have the revenue we need to put the homeless in homes, have the best public schools in the country all the way through college, and put the transport into transportation.  Charlie Baker’s running mate, Karyn Polito, has been going all over Massachusetts quoting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, saying, “The best social program is a job.”  Karyn doesn’t say that was FDR’s line, but you have to give her credit for agreeing with it.

Under the Blog section of CharlieBaker2014.gov, you’ll find a link to a Fox25 interview.  After 5:17 minutes the only mention of a jobs plan involved the word “vision”.  A WBUR interview on general topics was over 17 minutes long, so I confess I didn’t get all the way through.  Maybe Charlie Baker’s jobs plan is in there.  There is an article called “Charlie Baker Visits Central Massachusetts Business Expo”, and Charlie Baker is on the record as saying, “Small business turns into medium business turns into large business.”  So even though the best social program is a job, and they have a vision of more jobs, on the subject of how those jobs will come about, alas neither Karyn Polito nor Charlie Baker has anything new to offer, and certainly nothing with a proven track record of working.  He still likes deregulation.  He still likes keeping taxes on the wealthy low.  But real policy wonks know deregulation and low taxes for the wealthy only make the rich richer.  The beneficiaries of those policies don’t hire more workers, they invest in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, where the return on investment is greater.  Lowering taxes doesn’t raise revenue, and deregulation doesn’t increase employment.  If Charlie Baker were a real policy wonk he would understand the relationship between cause and effect, and we’d be hearing much better ideas about how to solve homelessness and create jobs.

I’m hoping this is temporary.  I’m hoping that Charlie Baker and Karyn Polito bring it.  I want to hear serious, evidence-based policy come out of that campaign.  I want to get into the weeds and have serious debates about how to solve the very real problems we face in Massachusetts.  I want to know if it’s all right with Charlie Baker that Massachusetts is ranked 47th out of 50 states on income inequality, and if it isn’t all right with him, I want to hear legitimate policy proposals for how to fix it.

Until then, no matter how much vision Charlie Baker has, no matter how much Karyn Polito knows people need jobs, the real policy wonks are going to win in November.