Having it both ways

Governor Deval Patrick wants you to know he's sorry.

Sort of. Kind of. Maybe not sorry, exactly.

That was the very cloudy message that emerged from his sparring session with the State House press corps yesterday, as another day of the great Cadillac Saga unfolded.

We began with high-road Deval: "I spent all weekend trying to make some very hard choices. And I think it's just impossible to deal with the choices I'm asking agencies to make without making some of my own."

The contrite tone, alas, survived but a single question. In response to question number two ("Do you have any regrets?"), things got a bit surly.

"I am sorry that we have all spent the kind of time we have on what we've spent time on, and I'm sorry to have been responsible," the governor said.

In other words, I'm sorry that so many of you need to get a life.

To be fair, he did come right out and say, "Yeah, we screwed up."

Then he went on to defend the decor in his new office, which sounds lovely indeed, not that I've seen it. He said he was prepared to be a "B.Y.O. governor -- bring your own furniture."

In due time, he got around to blaming the media, which wasn't a surprise.

He said he made the decision to pay for the furniture and part of the car lease because he wanted to get his message out.

"Unless I get this off your screen, I don't think we'll be able to do that," he said.

I'm on record as not giving a hoot what the governor gets driven around in. I still think people place too much emphasis on symbols over substance. At the end of the day, a leased Cadillac is a ridiculous barometer to measure Patrick by.

What is troubling, though, is Patrick's inability to think any problem of his has anything to do with him. If everyone could just be as high-minded, as substantive as he is, everything would be fine.

To that end, he defended his wife's $72,000-a-year scheduler-assistant as nothing different from other administrations.

"We just happened to call it by name," he said.

Not only is his assertion demonstrably false; it wouldn't meet anyone's definition of sacrifice.

At his best, Patrick is genuinely high-minded, which is part of his problem now. When you campaign as the reformer of the culture of Beacon Hill, you're not supposed to care about drapes and cars. But he does, clearly.

Patrick said yesterday that when he ran his errands last weekend, when he went to the cleaners, he got an entirely different kind of feedback than his coverage would suggest.

I don't know what his neighbors told him at the grocery store. But the most telling reactions I've heard to these stories have been from people who describe themselves as supporters, disappointed supporters.

If he thinks the public reaction is purely a media contrivance, he's mistaken.

The governor spoke yesterday about the budget he is proposing next week, about getting more police officers on the street, about municipal relief.

There's no argument here that every one of those issues is more important than his office decor.

The thing is, Patrick wants it all. He wants to be deep, yet stylish. He wants to be a populist, just one with an office out of Architectural Digest. He wants public affection, but public scrutiny makes him prickly.

There's no such thing as unconditional love in politics.

People, almost all of us, are bundles of contradictions. This town is full of people who want to help the poor and want to live in a nice house.

But it may not be possible for Patrick to fulfill all his wishes at the same time. It's not the car or the drapes; it's the perceived gap between what he said during the campaign and what he's doing.

His tough choices as governor have probably just begun.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.