Maybe you thought, like I did, that the brouhaha over a paltry million-dollar fete for Governor-elect Deval Patrick was a tempest in a teapot.  An excuse for the especially righteous among his base to get their holier-than-thous on, and for the wounded Republicans in the crowd to crow, "TOLD YA SO!"  I still fail to see what the big deal is.  At best it was a chance for political cynics to yawn, scratch themselves, and mutter, "and?" 

After all, politics is theater.  It's not all nuts and bolts, nose to the grind-stone, power-point presentations and pie-charts.  If it were, we'd be hailing Romney's reign as a golden age.  He loves nothing better than standing in front of a map or diagram and pointing at it.  He would have made a first-rate meteorologist.  If not for his love of wearing a hard-hat while pointing at his beloved maps and charts he may have been one.

As for the party-poopers—especially the ones who voted for Deval—pooping on his party, I have only this to say: if you missed Deval's high-flown rhetoric, his ironic modesty, what his wife referred to as his "wicked sense of humor," his coyness when taking in the too-easy adulation of the crowds, his emphasis on the tone over the substance of governance, and what all of these things augured for his administrative style, you have no one to blame but yourselves, so quit your bitchin'.  

If you expect the rest of us to sympathize with your apparent belief that all the sudden Deval's going to don a hairshirt and a cassock and take a vow of poverty now that he's in, you're sadly mistaken.  Whine all you want, if you're disappointed, it's your own damn fault.  You want a hero?  Read a comic book.  Want a martyr?  Go join a religion.  You won't find either in politics. 

You have to wonder how people who don't get that by the time they're old enough to vote, get anywhere.  Do they go to fast food restaurants for their dry-cleaning and hardware stores to get their hair done?  Do they pay a lawyer to do their lawn and have a sous chef do their taxes?  

Part of the disappointment in Deval on the part of voters at this early stage in the game is clearly due to their ignorance (often willful) of politics, and laughably unrealistic expectations of politicians.  "Well, he ran as an outsider defying business as usual," you say.  News-flash:  THEY ALL DO.  Especially when running against an incumbent.  Bush did, too, for chrissake.

Personally, I knew Deval was planning a big do from the simple fact that he was still running commercials reminiscing about his primary victory bash months into the general election campaign.  In the commercial, as you might recall,  he straddled the back of a folding chair backstage after the victory celebration was over, auditorium now deserted, balloons and streamers littering the floor, and congratulated himself and his supporters, gently reminding them that while it's fun to win big, there's work to be done... eventually.  After a few after-parties, and a couple days to sleep off the afterglow, and maybe a little trip to the spa to get rejuvenated for the long slog.  

Nitpicking and Kvetching and complaining over Deval's every move at this point brings up that eternal political question of who's worse in the end: the fool or the knave?  Neither could survive without the other—they are perfect complements—and both are necessary evils in politics. 

Right now, I'm for the knave.  I voted for him, after all.

For those who did not, this was not a bad week.  Although it spoils some of the fun of their hyperventilating Chicken Little shtick, they should be thrilled to hear that the one-party-rule honeymoon's been canceled.  Senate President Robert Travaglini, seeing cracks in Deval's armor already,  officially nixed it yesterday when he issued this threat, according to Globe sources: "I told the governor-elect, if you're willing to share and you care and you prepare and are ready to deliver, then everything will work out. If not, I have senators across the state who share my vision and my approach and if forced to choose, I'm comfortable with whom they'll choose."

Beleaguered Republicans who thought that Deval's agenda, whatever it turns out to be, would be rubber-stamped by his fellow party-members, betray their own ignorance of a system which ingeniously pits Senators against one another and naturally unites them against the governor, regardless of his party. 

I imagine Deval's starting to see that his governorship will not be the cake-walk his campaign was, that he will not receive automatic adulation merely for symbolizing the hopes and dreams of voters whose motives in voting are never quite clear, even to themselves, but are surely always mixed. 

He is now dealing with lawmakers, whose careers depend on delivering to their local constituencies, whose motives aren't vague and fuzzy, and whose cold hearts are unmoved by soaring rhetoric.  Charisma doesn't matter unless it can be converted into political capital, and it remains to be seen whether Deval can pull it off.

I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more of the impatient, pissy, and petulant Patrick that we got mere glimpses of during the campaign (usually whenever he wasn't being adequately adored).  And his administration is sure to be less open than he has unwisely given some reason to expect.  Deals don't go down in public.  That's what we have back rooms for.  And he's going to get grief for that, too. 

So I say to the governor-elect: "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow..." who knows?