Note to Baker: It pays to be nice to President Trump

Politicians like to say that elections have consequences. And they do.

So do words.

So, if you go around badmouthing your plumber, don’t expect him to rush to your rescue when the toilet explodes.

Things don’t work that way in plumbing or in life.

Things don’t work that way in politics either.

Just witness Gov. Charlie Baker, who is tied up in knots over alleged federal roadblocks to the state’s attempt to obtain much-needed medical equipment and supplies to protect medical personnel combating the spread of the coronavirus.

These supplies consist of personal protective equipment like masks, gowns, face protectors necessary to guard against being infected by the coronavirus. In many cases, according to Baker, the Trump administration has simply outbid states like Massachusetts in the purchase of such supplies and presumably allocated them to more needy states.

“We are doing everything we can through an incredibly messy thicket that is enormously frustrating for all of us to try to get them the gear they deserve, and they need,” Baker said last week.

“I’m telling you; we’re killing ourselves trying to make it happen,” he said, but the state kept being outbid by the federal government.

“They take what we order,” Mary Lou Sudders, Baker’s health and human services secretary said.

Baker took his “lost to the feds” message to President Trump on a conference call Trump hosted with the nation’s governors last week,.

At least Trump did not call him Charlie Parker, as Joe Biden did a week ago. Baker for years has been a critic of fellow Republican Trump. He makes a point of letting people know that he did not and would not even vote for him. This is the kind of thing that registers at the White House and among Trump appointees in the Washington bureaucracy.

This is not to say that politics plays a role in how federal aid is distributed to the states even in a pandemic, but it would be naïve to believe that it does not. It is worth noting, however, that both New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats and both major Trump critics, have suddenly been saying nice things about Trump now that federal assistance to fight the coronavirus is pouring into both states.

This aid includes the much sought-after ventilators as well as a pair of Navy hospital ships that are docking in New York and California. And Trump in turn has been complimentary to both governors, even as he raises past political differences with both.

Far be it for me to advise Gov. Baker, but it would not hurt if Baker every now and then acknowledged that, at the very least, Trump and his advisers have worked tirelessly to cope with the pandemic.

Flattery seems to work wonders with Trump. If you don’t flatter him, he flatters himself anyway.

In the final analysis, Baker must recognize that this is not about him, his pride or how he feels about Trump. He must be bigger than that. This is about the people of Massachusetts and what he must do to help them through these frightening times even if means thanking Trump and his advisers for the job they are doing.

Granted that would hurt Baker among the many liberals and progressives in this anti-Trump state. But if governors like Cuomo and Newsom, both critics and leaders of major anti-Trump states, can take the leap, so can Baker. It might hurt, but it will not kill him.

It would take some courage because Baker is all alone in the fight.

In the past, Massachusetts could rely on a strong Congressional delegation led by the late House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill and Ted Kennedy. O’Neill and Kennedy, unlike the useless progressives we now send to Washington, were practical liberal ideologues who nevertheless knew how to work the system, no matter who was president

Their ghosts could bring more medical assistance to the state right now than Trump-haters Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Eddie Markey and the rest of the state’s delegation to the U.S. House.

Passage of the $2 trillion rescue package was good. So was Trump declaring the state a major disaster area. The politicians we send to Congress couldn’t get you a plumber, let alone a ventilator.

Trump is sending 1,000 ventilators next week. Charlie, sometimes it pays to thank the plumber. Try it.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2ygPAqv