One has to wonder if Gov. Deval Patrick and former Mass. House Speaker/convicted felon/WRKO-AM talkmeister Thomas Finneran ever get together on the weekends to talk about their troubles.

It's tough to tell who's having a worse time of it. Patrick's ship has been taking on water ever since he stepped foot in the State House, and his attempts to recapture the spirit of his grassroots campaign seem doomed to failure. Meanwhile, "Felon Finneran" has been struggling with problems concerning advertiser support and an apparent unwillingness on the part of listeners to call in to his show.

Both Patrick and Finneran are well-educated, accomplished men who happen to be afflicted with the disease of unlimited arrogance. Both men's woes can be traced to their inability to control that arrogance.

Patrick and Finneran were the beneficiaries of tremendous advance promotion. Their backers insisted that they would revolutionize the respective fields of Massachusetts government and media. Some of their supporters, unfortunately, exhibited "unsportsmanlike conduct," engaging in over-the-top demonization of their respective predecessors, Mitt Romney and Scott Allen Miller.

Now that it's clear that Patrick and Finneran are not the saviors of government and media that their backers expected them to be, what do their backers say now? Their intense loathing of Romney and Miller cannot obscure the fact that their respective replacements are far, far worse.

Patrick and Finneran were both said to be better than the average type. Now, looking at their mediocre performances, it's obvious that we shouldn't have believed the hype.

UPDATE: More from Scott Allen Miller, Michael Graham, Casey Ross, Dan Kennedy and Red Mass Group.