I think I heard of Deval Patrick before most of the state. Living in Arlington, I talk to a number of intellectual-wing Democrats. Patrick got his message to them last year, and they were electrified. They heard someone who spoke their language and shared their vision. Until then, they had been looking at the prospect of long-time party hack Attorney General Reilly running an uninspired campaign against a well-funded Republican. They suddenly saw hope of a new day for Democrats. And they jumped on it.  The rest is history.  Barring a disaster of biblical performance, he’s going to be governor in January.

I worry about Patrick and the Democratic machine on Beacon Hill.  I worry that the legislature will start spending like drunken sailors, and Patrick won’t have the ability to stop it.  Under Republican governors the legislature always passed a bigger budget than the governor’s filed plan.  The governor then used the line-item veto, and some of the vetos stuck.  What’s going to happen in 2007?  Patrick will file a budget.  The legislature will increase it.  Will Patrick threaten a veto?  Will he use it?  Will he be effective at controlling spending?  I don’t think a Democrat governor can change the culture of Beacon Hill.

And what about the budgetary starting point, the budget that Patrick proposes?  How much larger will it be?  Read his positions.  I count 10 uses of the word “expand” and 5 of “broaden.”  Read the page, and after every bullet point ask yourself: “Will that cost me more tax money than it does now?”  How will he pay for it?  On that page he trots out the old saw that he  “will cut wasteful spending.”  Come on, is there a candidate in favor of wasteful spending?  One person’s wasteful spending is another person’s vital program.  He needs to be far more specific than “wasteful spending” before I believe he can pay for his programs.

That brings me to my biggest issue with Patrick: the state income tax.  The voters explicitly supported an income tax rollback to 5% in 2000.  In 2002 it was implicitly endorsed again when 45% of the state voted to roll the income tax to zero.  The Globe’s October 1 poll says that the rollback is still favored by voters.  But Patrick doesn’t think it’s a good idea – he says he wants to use the money to lower property taxes.  I don’t find this claim credible.  Massachusetts’s bastion of liberalism, the Boston Globe editorial page, sees it the same way: “But Patrick is also fooling voters by suggesting that his election would lead to cuts in property taxes.” I want a candidate who will lower taxes and make government smaller, and Patrick wants the opposite.

I also strongly disagree with Patrick on several education issues.  This is particularly frustrating because his campaign started by endorsing education reforms, but the teacher’s union twisted his arm, and he started to follow the party line.  He started the campaign advocating rewarding good teachers based on merit.  After the union was done with him, he was advocating “rewarding schools” based on merit.  I still can’t figure out how this could possibly make sense.  If you reward the successful schools, doesn’t that leave the schools that need the most help with the least money?  His education platform completely omits the word “merit.”  He caved to the union and ran from the issue.

All that said, I appreciate the campaign that he’s running. It may be short on details, but it’s long on vision. It doesn’t prey on fear, unknown, and doubt. It’s positive where it can be and is negative only where it needs to. It would be nice if I agreed with his plans, but I don’t. When I vote, I need a candidate who is pointed in the right direction at least most of the time. He’s not it.

The fact that I’m not voting for him won’t matter to him. He’s going to win, and he’s going to win big. Really, I hope that I’m proven wrong. I hope that he corrals the legislature and screws their heads back on. I hope that he fulfill his promise of a better future for Massachusetts. I hope that when he turns his plans into legislation that reality and reason prevail. But I’m not expecting it.