Expertise has been feeding People an ever-more-distorted picture of what our authorities leaders are as much as and who we are as a rustic, and it’s doing lasting injury to our democracy, said Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker in an address on the John F. Kennedy Jr. Discussion board at Harvard Kennedy Faculty on Thursday night.
Social media’s rise and dominance in politics has had “profoundly destructive consequences” for the way residents have interaction – or disengage – with other Individuals and with the political process.
“Finding people who share your love of gardening is just as easy as discovering individuals who share your love for hate speech,” mentioned Baker during his supply of the Godkin Lecture. That ease of connection generally is a positive, however he blames it for “a lot” of the rising extremism in both the Democratic and Republican events.
“Our problem is just not the values, views, and hopes and aspirations of most Individuals,” he said. It’s the negativity and divisiveness pushed by the political class, together with the press, which is then amplified by social media algorithms, that is souring the public’s view of politics.
“Most Americans are much less partisan, much less bombastic, and less combative” than these working in and reporting on our politics and authorities, and “their cynicism about politics is commonly the result of what they read and hear from their leaders” online, he stated.
He pointed to the growth of registered Independents and the shrinking ranks of the 2 main events as evidence of Americans’ rising distaste for partisan discord in the nation.
Voters “want all forms of media, and those that serve in public life, to focus much less on the charges and countercharges of the day, and extra on the very actual issues that this nation faces and most importantly, what their plans are to deal with them. They don’t count on perfection, but they absolutely expect collaboration and progress.”
The son of a Republican father and a Democratic mother who argued coverage and politics every evening on the dinner table, Baker garnered widespread praise from Democrats and Independents, despite being a Republican, for largely avoiding partisan battles and taking a more technocratic method to governing. He gained consideration nationally for his regular oversight in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and capacity to avoid getting the state embroiled in political debates sparked by the opposition of then-President Donald Trump to some public health directives. Baker, who was first elected governor in Nov. 2014, leaves workplace in January.
Harvard President Larry Bacow, a longtime HKS school member, said Baker “represents all the pieces that we’d hope a Kennedy College graduate would be – any individual who’s passionately dedicated to public service, somebody who cares deeply about how government could be more efficient and better, and in doing so, benefit its residents and the public.”
Baker, a 1979 graduate of the School, reflected on how a lot expertise has modified the best way we collect and course of info since his time at Harvard. Back then, scouring the Out of Town newsstand in Harvard Sq. after midnight to seize bulldog editions of native and nationwide newspapers felt like getting a bounce on the Daily News earlier than it happened. Forty-five years later, cellphones and social media have radically remodeled the best way we live and relate to the world around us, an enormous shift we don’t at all times perceive or absolutely admire, he mentioned.
Baker pointed to a prophetic BBC interview with David Bowie in 1999. He quoted the rock star as saying, “The potential of what the internet is going to do to society each good and dangerous is unimaginable … I believe we’re on the cusp of one thing exhilarating and terrifying. The actual content material and the state of content material is going to be so completely different from something we envision at the moment where the interplay between the consumer and the supplier will likely be so insimpatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.”
Baker inspired students to get involved in government and public service, no matter their background or level of experience. “Public service wants the general public, not simply the professional politicians,” he said.
Closer to dwelling, Baker said the “No. 1 problem” going through the MBTA is a scarcity of staff to fill vacant jobs. About 1,000 openings stay unfilled, forcing bus routes and repair to be curtailed. He additionally defended the 30-day shutdown of the MBTA’s Orange Line in August, saying it allowed five years of needed repairs to be carried out in a month and that the subsequent governor would have “a much better system” consequently. The relentless criticism of the T by the press – “some deserved, some not” – has helped drive the public’s negative perceptions.
Whereas he said he didn’t know where the Republican Celebration is headed sooner or later, Baker stated he anticipated non-MAGA Republicans to leave the occasion, with many enrolling as Independents, a trend that will have irreversible results on the GOP and harm the two-occasion system.
As a two-term Republican governor in a Blue state, Baker quoted fictional Tv soccer coach Ted Lasso, who appeared to have the correct idea: “The manner by means of this morass is to be extra curious and less judgmental.”
The annual deal with is named for Edwin L. Godkin, a celebrated Irish-born journalist and editor of American newspapers within the 19th century, most notably the new York Night Publish. At the urging of Frederick Regulation Olmstead and others, Godkin was founding editor of The Nation in 1865, a journal that sought to cover the day’s present affairs in a daring, nonpartisan trend.