Session seems to drift in question period
No governor in recent memory has subjected himself to audience questions on live television at the end of his budget address.
It is easy to understand why. Last night at Memorial Hall in Melrose, Deval Patrick offered a rousing budget address that recalled why the public fell in love with him on the campaign trail. He talked about confronting problems candidly and shared responsibilities for the condition of public schools and roads.
He invoked the vision of the founding fathers of the Commonwealth and called on his audience to trust a similar "faith in things unseen."
The crowd seemed to love it. But after the standing ovation, when the questions began, things seemed to drift, at least for the television audience.
Inside Memorial Hall, it felt warm and chatty. But television viewers without specialized knowledge of state government and the characters involved were left to puzzle over who was who and what they were talking about.
Many of the questioners seemed to be local officials or advocates for nonprofits, who offered up alphabet soup queries about things like the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority) and the MRVP (Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program).
Even as Patrick joked about the plants in the audience, he kept recognizing his interrogators as old friends from the campaign trail.
"Hey, Bobby!" Patrick called out cheerfully when the president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO stood up to plug for workforce development, after reminiscing about a recent meeting he and the governor had in Washington.
One woman began, "I'm sure I'm not alone here" as being a supporter of your campaign.
The governor remained good natured and game to attempt any question thrown at him.
But the format showed over and over again that after two months as governor, Patrick could not possibly have all the answers. Time after time, he sought someone from his staff to help him answer them.
"Matt? Matt?" Patrick called out several times, searching for his budget director, Matthew Gorzkowicz, in the crowd of about 600 people.
Of course, even an experienced governor might stumble over the details of such an extraordinarily complex document as the state budget, and Patrick is a first-term governor and political novice.
Some of the uneven quality of the presentation could be blamed on faulty technology.
At some points, Patrick strained to see people in the audience, shielding his eyes from the glare of television lights.
"Nice to see you," he told one questioner, "to the extent that I can."
Aides said the governor planned to make the Melrose stop the first on a tour of the state that the governor plans to make to explain his budget over the next four to six weeks.
No plans have been announced to televise those events. 