The Joys of Democratic Governance
The Chicago Tribune is Mugged by Reality
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in Democratic Governors | State Politics — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Congressional Democrats have been discovering, after 12 years out of power, that actually governing is a lot harder and less fun than griping from the cheap seats; but as long as George W. Bush is in the White House, they retain a convenient scapegoat for the gap between their rhetoric and reality.
Democratic governors, the numbers of which have proliferated in recent years, have no such luxury; having sold the pie in the sky, they actually have to bake it. I've been warning of this since the spring in regard to tax hikes, and Eliot Spitzer's disastrous illegal-immigrant-driver's license plan is only one of many other examples of Democratic governors reminding people why there were so many Republican incumbents in the first place.
Add now the Chicago Tribune, no right-wing rag, to the list of the disenchanted, to the point of arguing that the Rod Blagojevich era demonstrates why Illinois needs a mechanism to recall a governor:
Read On...
The bill of particulars against Rod Blagojevich is numbingly familiar. His is a legacy of federal and state investigations of alleged cronyism and corruption in the steering of pension fund investments to political donors, in the subversion of state hiring laws, in the awarding of state contracts, in matters as personal as that mysterious $1,500 check made out to the governor's then-7-year-old daughter by a friend whose wife had been awarded a state job.
Presented this year with an extraordinary opportunity -- his Democratic Party controlling both houses of the Illinois General Assembly -- Blagojevich has squandered what should have been a leadership moment: He is governor of a state in desperate need of more accountability in its public schools, of a new tax formula for funding those schools, of a meaningful attack on its swelling pension indebtedness. Today Illinois has ... solutions to none of the above.
Instead, taxpayers are bankrolling an endless game of chicken between legislative leaders and a governor known to boast about his self-diagnosed "testicular virility." Blagojevich has clumsily tried to recast himself as a prairie populist, bashing his state's employers. He has borrowed from the future to cover costs of state government today. And in a fiasco that may have its own constitutional implications, he has redirected millions of taxpayers' dollars to personal priorities that he can't convince lawmakers to support.
Blagojevich is an intentionally divisive governor and a profoundly unhelpful influence. He is unwilling or unable to see the chaos all around him. This year, lawmakers failed to make progress on schools, on state pension reform, on any number of critical matters. Mass transit in the Chicago region is about to implode, largely because of the state government's failure.
Yet Blagojevich said 10 days ago that "If you measure success on whether or not you are doing things for people, this is the most successful session in years."
Do you see that success? Do you see Blagojevich forging compromises and solving problems? Or do you see the same distracted governor who, after House members crushed his 2007 tax scheme by a vote of 107-0, said: "Today, I think, was basically an up. ... I feel good about it."
He is the governor who cannot govern.
Read the whole thing, and ask yourself: shouldn't the GOP be doing more to capitalize on the incompetence and corruption of its adversaries?
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The Joys of Democratic Governance 12 Comments (0 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
We're still suffering because of him. We've also had the missfortune to have picked poor candidates for Senate and Governor in the last few elections.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
How long must the people of Illinois suffer because of the legacy of George Ryan's administration and its failures, is the question that should be asked in the next election in Illinois.
I think they've served their time. When I lived in Illinois it was pretty obvious to me that the state lurched from the shame of their Republican governor into the waiting hands of Rod Blegojevich, who in many ways is worse (although he looks younger on television and doesn't remind people of Wilfred Brimley and the late Dave Thomas of Wendy's).
I haven't followed Illinois politics closely since I left, but I'm always hoping that the Republicans have had enough time to right their ship. If so, maybe the people of Illinois are ready to elect a real governor.
Anybody else starting to notice a trend out there?
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
The Trib's editorial board has always been right-of-center. However, there isn't a paper in the state - left, right or center- that could paint a positive picture of Blagojevich and the Dem Senate and House.
- shouldn't the GOP be doing more to capitalize on the incompetence and corruption of its adversaries?
You bring up a good point: the Democrats are corrupt and incompetent. Perhaps Republicans should attempt to capitalize on that by claiming that if the voters elect more Republicans there will be less corruption and incompetence.
The question is whether anyone would believe that. I know of no reason why they should. It was only last year that the voters tossed out a bunch of Republicans because too many R's were corrupt or incompetent.
It seems to me that the solution to both these problems is to reduce the size of government. So long as all these huge sums are at stake in every nook and cranny of human endeavor, there will be palms, grease, and people who want to combine them. In an era of moral breakdown, this can only lead to problems.
As for the incompetence, that seems to go along with government enterprise in general. There are exceptions but not many. So the less we have government do, the less incompetence we will have.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
and in Illinois, that is an invalid assumption, or at least it has been over years since George Ryan was elected. Perhaps they've wised up in the two years since I left Illinois, but before that, the IL GOP was a bunch of buffoons, with few exceptions.
“I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels” - John Calvin
I don't know what we did to deserve it, but Democrat or Republican, it doesn't seem to matter. "Illinois political buffoon" is bipartisan.
They just define their role in government differently.
Republicans define governing in policy and managerial terms; they identify problems, pose solutions, and when in power try to implement those solutions. Democrats don't really bother with the latter two. They identify problems, or create them, and constituencies associated with those problems, feel their pain, pander to their fear and greed, and try to do nothing about them, for to solve a problem would cause them to lose a constituency. To this end, they ALWAYS pose the most extreme and pandering "solutions" in the full knowledge that the "solution" will never pass the legislative body. This allows them to both blame the opposition and keep the issue and constituency in play.
If a Republican officeholder wants to "do well by doing good," s/he is limited to rather hamfisted stuff like earmarking, steering contracts and grants, and outright bribery and corruption, all of which can cause ethics problems. Democrats, due to over fifty years of virtually untrammelled power at the federal level, have built a shadow government of non-profit and for-profit service providers, foundations, think-tanks and the like to which they can funnel money without the taint of corruption.
If Randy Cunningham had been a Democrat or had a brain, he'd have just set up some nice non-profits, hired a good accountant, and opened the money spigot. He'd now be a well-respected, philanthropic, multi-millionaire instead of a convicted felon.
In Vino Veritas
I hope Illinois in general, and Chicago in particular, choke on the incompetence of Democrats.
On the other hand, that would mean we would see even more economic and ploitical refugees down here in Dixie. Tough choice...
This is the state that sent Dick Durbin and Barack Obama to the US Senate. As long as there is a D next to the name, any candidate is safe, no matter how incompetent.
It isn't "shame". It's an incompetent state Republican party, combined with a massive collective of victim-status minorities in Cook County.
I wouldn't be surprised if a real poll revealed that many people don't even know Dems are the majority in congress. This simple message needs to be told.
Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what my country can do for me. Washington Elected Elite
There is a reason why all of this dissatisfaction will come to naught. Democrats, and increasingly everyday, formerly reasonable independents will not vote for a Republican because they see Republicans as unsophiscated hillbillies.
It would be great to see Republicans take up the mantle of sound change; but of course Illinois in the Chicago area won't vote for a Republican for anything. Governor Ryan didn't help our cause there either.