It wasn’t quite a Kinsley gaffe, the political blunder that journalist Michael Kinsley once observed happens when “a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
But it was a telling moment last week when House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz, in an effort to plaster a happy “this is fine” face on the five-alarm fire spreading across the Massachusetts economy, told a Joint Ways and Means Committee hearing that decent recent revenue numbers show the economy is holding up well “while some folks are almost wishing us into some type of recession for political gain.”
That was most likely a reference to the three Republican gubernatorial candidates lobbing spitball at the Healey administration along with the Trump squad in Washington doing their best to undercut our economic pillars. But who’s he kidding? Michlewitz is a born-and-bred Bostonian, and thus a product of a political culture where hoping for your enemy’s failure is a given.
Does he root for the Trump administration’s policies to prove a smashing success? When the Yankees eliminate Boston from the postseason, do Red Sox fans hope for them to go all the way?
In politics, one person’s failure is another’s opportunity. The perception that Joe Biden had overspent the economy into an inflationary spiral opened the door for Trump 2, not exactly a clinic in wise economic management so far. No wonder the GOP hopefuls are hammering away at the blame game, typified by a Brian Shortsleeve post last week reacting to Healey’s fingerpointing at Trump during that Ways and Means hearing. “Massachusetts didn’t fall to the bottom in private-sector job growth because of Washington, we’re bleeding jobs because Maura Healey policies make it harder to do business here,” he wrote.
Perhaps that predictable line of attack will connect with voter anxiety and help Shortsleeve, Mike Kenneally or Mike Minogue make a race of it this fall. It’ll be a heavy lift, if the latest batch of Morning Consult polling can be believed. Healey racks up an impressive 62% approval rating, fifth best in the nation, the almost exact inverse of Trump’s dismal 64% disapproval in Massachusetts, his fourth-worst showing.
Other polls have shown lower numbers for Healey. But as long as she keeps clearing 50% approval it’s a sign she is better positioned to survive our economic malaise than her adversaries.
Healey loves corny basketball analogies, so here’s one: a diminutive point guard can’t have her shot-blocking skills equated with those of Bill Russell or Hakeem Olajuwon, but she’s at least comparable to Derrick White, the Celtics guard with an uncanny ability to swat away layups. While the Republicans understandably try to make hay of her past resistance to natural gas pipelines that might have eased the current energy-cost nightmare, all voters see on the news these days is Healey postponing costly clean-energy mandates, jawboning the utilities for rebates, and calling for more energy from an array of sources. Rent control? She’s against it. Right-to-strike for the teacher unions? Ditto.
These are not the positions of a radical left wing nut job bent on destroying the working classes, the preferred Republican narrative. Instead, the radical attacks on our economic well-being – ill-conceived tariffs, destruction of the immigrant labor force, repelling tourism – are mostly coming from inside the White House.
Unless the Republicans who would be governor want to take a cue from Trump apostate John Deaton, they will likely find their candidacies strangled by their heavyweight albatross. Should he be continuing to fail, as most Democrats, Aaron Michlewitz included, surely pray.