Gov. Baker’s stodgy e book title an awesome treatment for insomnia

Charlie Baker should have come up with a title that pops.

Surely the two-term Republican governor could have done better than “Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done.”

That is the dreary title of the book Baker co-authored with Steve Kadish, his former chief of staff. It will be published in May. And it sounds like something former Gov. Mike Dukakis, a policy wonk, could have written.

The title of one of Dukakis’ books, for instance, is “Leader-Managers in the Public Sector, Managing for Results.” Another is “Revenue Enforcement, Tax Amnesty and the Federal Government.” Yikes.

While no doubt important tomes, neither one would be turned into a movie.

Carpetbagger Mitt Romney, who served as governor from 2003 to 2007, upped the book-naming game by calling his book “No Apology, the Case for American Greatness.”

No apology indeed. If anyone deserved an apology from Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah, it is the people of Massachusetts, who Romney used and then abandoned to run for president.

Even though the Baker book is a bureaucrat’s dream, the governor, who is not seeking re-election, could have come up with a much better, sexier and eye-catching title.

Since it is not a tell-all backroom memoir, but a serious work on governing and bureaucracy, the governor clearly avoided such titles as “Locked and Loaded at the State House,” “Night Sessions on Beacon Hill,” “Lounging with Lobbyists” and “Midnight in the Press Gallery.”

According to a summary, the book offers a four-step framework “for anyone in public service, as well as for leaders and managers in large organizations hamstrung by bureaucracy and politics.”

It is not known if Baker had the MBTA or the RMV in mind, but the description fits. Both are large organizations that are hamstrung by bureaucracy and politics. Snowstorms, too.

While it is not expected to be a bestseller, it will be must reading for students at the Kennedy School of Government (aka Camelot High) at Harvard since it is being published next door by the Harvard Business Review Press

Baker is probably the ideal public official to write about bureaucracy. That his because he was a bureaucrat long before he became governor.

Baker served as secretary of Health and Human Services as well as secretary of Administration and Finance under Republican Gov. Bill Weld.

The quirky and colorful Weld, who is probably the last Massachusetts politician with swagger, was not a governor devoted to the details of governing as he was to the big picture. That was the picture of him behind the desk in the Oval Office

Weld was a believer in the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s observation that, “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”

This frequently gave Baker, then working for Weld, his mentor, the opportunity to gain experience in running the state, which he did fairly well when he became governor. Then COVID-19 struck and ruined the plans of many.

Baker learned a lot about governing when he worked for Weld, and for the late Gov. Paul Cellucci, Weld’s successor. But he failed to nail down Weld’s swagger.

Otherwise, he would have come up with a title for his book that people would sit up and take notice, let alone pick up and read.

How do you hold an audience at a book reading with a book called “Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done”?

This is a sign that while Baker, a Republican elected governor twice in a Democratic state, got the prose part of politics, campaigning and governing right, he failed to capture the poetry.

Hardly had Weld left office in 1997 than he published the first of three novels, called “Mackerel by Moonlight” in 1998. It is a story about Terry Mullally, a smart-talking former U.S. prosecutor who runs for office in Massachusetts. Weld once served as U.S. attorney.

This was followed by “Big Ugly,” a novel that finds the rogue Mullally elected to the U.S. Senate. Weld’s third novel is called “Stillwater.” The background of the novel is the flooding of several towns to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Weld’s writing throughout is smooth.

Baker should have learned from Weld: You govern in prose; you publish in poetry.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.