Posts Tagged Fred Hiatt

Governors want Washington to do its job – PostPartisan – The Washington Post

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Government on May 24, 2012


Posted at 04:42 PM ET, 05/23/2012

Governors want Washington to do its job

By Fred Hiatt

 

 

There’s nothing like talking to a state governor or three to be reminded that political dysfunction in Washington isn’t just a depressing game: It really matters, to real people.

The governors are in town for the annual meeting of the National Governors Association, and three of them visited The Post on Wednesday. There were two Democrats (Christine Gregoire of Washington and Jack Markell of Delaware) and one Republican (Dave Heineman of Nebraska), but they were fairly united in their views of Washington, D.C., dynamics.

“Our worst day in Delaware is better than the best day in Washington,” Markell said, at most half-jokingly.

“They need to know each other on a more personal basis,” Heineman said of capital politicians. “I don’t know if it’s a picnic, or a summer retreat. But they need to find a way to get to know each other.”

Gregoire added that it’s often unclear, at NGA meetings, which governor belongs to which party. “You can’t tell, because we’re there to govern,” she said.

But it was when the conversation turned to the practical effects of Washington paralysis that the governors really warmed up.

Because businesses don’t know what to expect in their taxes or health insurance law, they are reluctant to hire and invest, the governors agreed.

Because Congress has failed to reauthorize the federal transportation bill, Gregoire said, several major projects, already underway, are at risk. She can’t very well stop them in mid-construction; but she can’t complete them without the promised federal share of dollars.

Because Congress stalled on climate change reform, so have the states. Both Delaware and Washington belong to regional climate change partnerships. “But when Congress did nothing, it took the wind out of the sails of the Western Climate Initiative,” Gregoire said. “We started seeing states saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, if we’re not moving as a country . . . ’ There’s a fear you’re going to put yourself at an economic disadvantage.”

Because Congress failed to pass immigration reform, she said, “I nearly lost my apple crop last year.” Americans don’t want the harvesting jobs, she explained, and ramped-up enforcement without an accompanying guest-worker program has deprived Washington farmers of the labor they need. Now, she continued, it’s her asparagus that’s at risk; soon it will be “my cherries.”

Delaware farmers are “scared to death about what’s going to happen to their farms,” Markell agreed. And legal immigrants and their descendants, Heineman chimed in, are getting tired of living under suspicion.

“It’s very disappointing,” the Nebraska Republican said. “This is one where we need a federal policy.” No matter what decision Congress makes, Heineman added, “You’re going to make half the country mad. But we’re paying you the big bucks. Make a decision.”

 Governors want Washington to do its job – PostPartisan – The Washington Post.

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Where are the serious Republican candidates? – The Washington Post

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Opinion, Perspective, Politics, Social, Society on January 16, 2012


Fred Hiatt

Fred Hiatt

Editorial Page Editor

Where are the serious Republican candidates?

By Fred Hiatt, Published: January 15

 

Why is the Republican presidential field so weak?

Six months ago, that might have seemed an unfair question, or at least premature. The roster of candidates often starts out looking like the “seven dwarfs,” only to have some rise in stature while others fall away.1845

That hasn’t happened this time. Mitt Romney looks no less presidential today than he did at the start. But none of the others has come close to making himself plausible.

Ron Paul, second-place finisher in New Hampshire, remains what he always was: a movement leader, an advocate for both attractive and highly unattractive tenets of libertarianism — a fringe candidate.

Rick Santorum, launching from the unlikely platform of a losing Senate race, has come across as a sincere but sour, less inclusive, smaller-bore version of Mike Huckabee.Rick Perry, owner of the most promising resume, opened by calling the Federal Reserve chairman a traitor and went downhill from there. Newt Gingrich has demonstrated a disqualifying ego, which takes some doing in this business. Jon Huntsman has demonstrated that he can speak Chinese.

And already we are doubting our memories: Were Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann really serious candidates?

One of these people might have surprised in the Oval Office. Science has yet to discover how to predict which Kansas City haberdasher will exceed low expectations and which Georgia peanut farmer will fulfill them. It’s also true that the fantasy candidates who didn’t declare — Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, David Petraeus — would, under the scrutiny of press and rivals, have turned out to be human, too.

Still, on all available evidence it was and remains a weak field. So, again: Why?

It could be the luck of the draw. Every first-grade teacher will tell you that some years are better than others.

It could be that more serious presidential candidates, sizing up the incumbent in 2009, when serious campaigns had to begin, decided, not illogically, that President Obama was likely to win. Let someone else be the John Kerry of the Republican Party. Come back in 2016.

It could be that the process has devolved, for some, from daunting to repellent: the number of millionaires whose egos must be stroked on the way to raising $1 billion, the smears from unaccountable political action committees, the dwindling media interest in substance, the Twitter-paced cycle that makes the Clinton war room look like something from the vacuum-tube era — it may be a quadrennial bar to many people of quality.

It could be that serious people looked at the decisions that will have to be made in the next four years and concluded that the job would not be much fun. Taking charge in an era of rising health-care costs and an aging population doesn’t seem, at first blush, a road to popularity.

But in another year, that challenge might have motivated top-flight people. After all, the country’s travails offer an opportunity for fundamental reform that a true leader would jump at — to reshape the tax code, say, to encourage things we like (working and saving) and discourage things we don’t (burning oil, gas and coal). Such big things could be done, for political and substantive reasons, only in a bipartisan fashion.

For their own reasons, Obama and the Democrats haven’t seized that opportunity. But why have visionary Republicans shied away?

The nearly forgotten candidacy of Tim Pawlenty offers a clue. Once upon a time a conservative governor from a swing region with a record of working across the aisle might have gained traction.

But in a party that has come to loathe compromise, Pawlenty didn’t have the gumption to run on his record, and he couldn’t sell himself as less nice and more ideologically pure than he really was. When he couldn’t bring himself to be mean to Romney in an early New Hampshire debate, he was finished.

The Republican ideology of no new taxes, ever, is a straitjacket. But even more dispositive is the conviction that reaching across the aisle is weak and treasonous.

Until that conviction fades, politicians who want to get things done, and would know how to strike deals in the nation’s interest, may stay on the sidelines.

 Where are the serious Republican candidates? – The Washington Post.

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