Michael Graham on our own Barack Obama.

Is it time to elect an inspiring, Harvard-trained, black attorney from Chicago? A candidate with little experience, who rejects the idea of triangulation and instead celebrates his progressive politics?

In Massachusetts, we already did. And we’ve got the taxes and debt to prove it.

Tonight, Gov. Deval Patrick will address the DNC, and comparisons between him and Barack Obama are unavoidable. In fact, the joke from Massachusetts is that Gov. Patrick’s going to give a speech so good, you’ll enjoy it even more when Barack Obama gives it on Thursday.

But the similarities go far beyond a bit of friendly plagiarism.

When Gov. Patrick was elected in 2006, he had never held elected office of any kind. He had virtually no experience as an executive, and his political experience, such as it was, came during his years in the Clinton Justice Department.

Deval Patrick won his party’s nomination by running to the left of a well-known establishment candidate (sound familiar?) and handily defeated GOP Lt. Governor Kerry Healy in her bid to become Massachusetts’ first woman elected to the governor’s office.

So you can see why Seth Gitell in the New York Sun recently called Massachusetts under Gov. Patrick “Obama’s Petri Dish,” a possible preview of an Obama presidency. For the sake of America, let’s hope not.

In his autobiography, Joe Biden says that the Carter administration taught him that “on-the-job training for a president can be a dangerous thing.” In Massachusetts, we now know it’s not so great for a governor, either. The first months of the Patrick administration in 2007 were marred by goofy, rookie mistakes: He spent $23,000 on new drapes for the governor’s office; he wanted the state to get rid of the standard-issue Crown Vic and lease a Cadillac DTS (quickly dubbed the “Deval Transportation System”) for him; he put an assistant for his wife on the state payroll.

UPDATE: More from Matt Margolis, the Harvard Crimson, the Globe and the Herald.

SECOND UPDATE: From Howie Carr and the Herald.

THIRD UPDATE: More from the Herald, the Globe and Wall Street Journal.

FOURTH UPDATE: From the New York Daily News and Bob Parks.