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| Ned Lamont |
There are both
advantages and disadvantages to chief executives elected to office from outside
the political box. One of the greatest disadvantages relates to political
navigation. Asked about Governor Ned Lamont’s first year in office, Republican
leader in the State Senate Len
Fasano said, “It’s a lack of
understanding in that building that has been an impediment to the governor
closing the deal” on transportation. “I think the business principles and
brains are of value, but they are nullified if you can’t navigate the
building.” On the matter of transportation, Lamont’s two pilot fishes in the
General Assembly are President of the State Senate Martin Looney and House
Speaker Joe Aresimowicz. The Democrat majority in the General Assembly is headed
by Looney, a fixture in the General Assembly for 26 years, and Aresimowicz, a
union employee fearful of fouling his own nest.
Fasano added,
provocatively, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this: He [Lamont] needs to
grab a little bit of Gov. Malloy’s behavior and say, ‘This is what I want. This
is what I think is good for the state. And this is what, Democratic majority, you’re
going to deliver for me.’”
Arriving at the
governor’s mansion from the business world, Lamont stepped abruptly into a new
frontier the perils of which were unfamiliar to him.
It may be worthwhile
pausing over Fasano’s observation. Malloy, who came to the governor’s office
after ruling with an iron fist as Mayor of Stamford Connecticut for 14 years
found the transition to governor much easier than had Lamont. And, of course,
Malloy brought all his autocratic vices, as well as his virtues – persistence and hardheadedness -- into his new position. During his first term as governor,
Malloy assembled his budgets without any effective input from Fasano and other
Republicans who, given superior Democrat numbers in the General Assembly, found
themselves effectively neutered.
So then, when Fasano
said Lamont should “grab a little bit of Governor Malloy’s behavior,” he was
not recommending that Lamont should become Malloy, who put Fasano on an ice
flow and pushed him into a frozen wasteland. Fasano wants Lamont to bring his
business background with him into office. Lamont should decide in his own mind
what is good for the state, and deploy more aggressively the usufructs of his
office. Fasano, not without reason, is convinced that ever mounting taxes,
crippling regulations, and the indisposition of Democrats to cut spending are
not good for the state.
So then, if Lamont
properly uses the powers of his office to lift Connecticut from its death
spiral, what policies should he favor and pursue with the same energy and persistence
deployed by Malloy?
Aye, there’s the
rub. Lamont’s fiercest political opposition will not come from Republicans, who
are out-manned in the General Assembly by progressive Democrats. An ice flow
awaits them. No, the political tug on Lamont will come from members in his own
party who have fallen under the spell of dreamy progressive notions, the most
noxious of which is this: that the state of Connecticut IS state government and
nothing more than the agglomeration of political interests passionately represented
by state progressives, pilot fishes Looney and Arsimowicz, who perversely
refuse to acknowledge that the interests they champion – an unabating
continuation of higher taxes, more spending, the shifting of designated funding
from so-called “lock boxes” to the general slush fund, the extension of debt to
future taxpayers who are leaving the state in droves, a disinclination to pay down
mounting debt, a perverse toleration of failing urban public schools, the false
promises made by political Babbitts to the poor and needy in the state – do not
contribute to the public good.
The state, properly
understood, is the people who live, work and pay exorbitant taxes in
Connecticut, and not the dominant ruling class in the state or the political
interests they favor. These people are disorganized and await political arbiters
– an honest and forthright media that will denounce political Babbittry with the
energy and dispatch of a Mark Twain or a Henry Mencken, a genuine populism
deeply woven into the muscle and sinew of the real state – to liberate the state
from the false claims of self-interested politicians who cannot understand G.
K. Chesterton’s masterful defense of tradition: “Tradition means giving votes
to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the 'democracy
of the dead.' Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant
oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
To be lived, the
good life must first be preserved, then passed on to future generations. Connecticut is not destined to leave its children a mess of pottage purchased with their birthrights. Some people voted
for Lamont because they sensed in him the possibility of a change in direction
that would lead to a restoration of the best traditions of Connecticut.
Were they wrong?
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