Cindi Scoppe’s column today about Mark Sanford’s “good vetoes” makes an excellent point. Many of his vetoes as governor have truly been about good and smart government, and have tried to undo some of the General Assembly’s more objectionable excesses.
Unfortunately, the governor has generated so much bad blood between himself and lawmakers — and damaged his credibility outside the State House with such wrongheaded moves as trying to block the stimulus — that he’s made it much, much easier for lawmakers to brush him off, even when he’s right.
Some who still defend the governor believe this is not his fault, that it’s all the fault of those wicked, wasteful lawmakers. And indeed, legislators give such critics ammunition when they reject even the governor’s demonstrably good ideas.
But the sad truth is — and it IS a sad truth to someone who initially was a Sanford supporter, as I was — that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure his own ineffectiveness in dealing with the Legislature across the board. However wasteful or foolish you may think lawmakers as a group are (and Lord knows they give plenty of opportunities for you to draw that conclusion), the fact is that the Republican leaders would love to have worked with a governor of their own party to achieve his agenda, even when it wasn’t theirs. It’s in their nature, whatever their flaws.
Cindi does a pretty decent job of explaining how that happened, although you had to be there watching closely to fully get the degree to which he has spoiled his opportunities:
Unfortunately, the Legislature dealt with his 2004 vetoes in a most irresponsible way (overriding 105 of 106 of them in 90 minutes, before most legislators even had a chance to hear his arguments), which prompted his even more-irresponsible response (carrying two squealing, defecating piglets into the State House in a made-for-TV protest), which made legislators even more angry, which made the governor even more provocative, which made legislators even more determined to ignore him, which made him even less concerned about making nice — or acting responsibly — which prompted legislators to not just ignore him but punish him, which ….
You get the point. And all of that was before he united just about the entire Legislature — Republican and Democrat and, more significantly, House and Senate — in seething opposition to his campaign to reject federal stimulus funding unless it is used to not stimulate the economy.
And let me tell you, it’s one thing to unite Democrat and Republican. Uniting the House and the Senate against you takes real talent for p0litical self-destruction, bordering on genius.
The result is that the governor’s good ideas get swept away with the bad, and that truly is a shame.
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It’s hard to give the governor much credit when your child’s school is getting messed up. His lawsuit will keep school funding up in the air this summer, making it harder to schedule teachers and classes for next year.
William –
The legislature drafted a base budget (i.e., the part of the budget without the stimulus money included) that intentionally underfunded eduction. They left gaping holes in the base education budget and “filled” them using the supplemental part of the budget that allocated the stimulus money.
Some legislators attempted to craft a base budget that filled as many of the essential holes as possible, and left lower-priority budget items to be filled by stimulus funds. The thinking was, “Let’s make the base budget as strong as possible, in case we don’t get the stimulus funds. That way we won’t be in quite as bad of shape if we don’t.”
The leadership of the Senate shot it down. Why? Because by leaving these huge holes in the base budget, they could say that Gov. Sanford was leaving schools with no clue about their funding. That without the stimulus funds, districts would have to lay off thousands of teachers.
Politically, they were trying to leave Sanford with no choice. They wanted to make the consequences of his not accepting the stimulus funds as bad as possible, so they intentionally wrote a budget that would “hold him hostage.”
Some would argue that Sanford should have just let them have their way. I’m guessing that his thinking here (with this lawsuit) is not to completely deny the stimulus funds, but to prevent the legislature from railroading him into doing whatever they want, however they want to do it. If his suit is sucessful, I suspect the legislature will come to the budget negotiating table in earnest.
Critics of Mark Sanford act like our governor is supposed to be a figurehead, or just an errand boy for the legislature.
It is his job, his authority, and his duty to stand in the way of their rampant waste of money.