My Turn: Jim does not equal jobs
Now, the unemployment rate is the highest in 14 years (”State jobless rate highest in 14 years,” June 21) and that is without including IBM’s most recent cuts. It would be disingenuous to suggest that this was all the governor’s fault. Yet, by the governor’s own measurement, not only is he falling short, the record during his tenure is really quite a failure.
Being that it’s a political season, of course the governor will claim that this is not his fault, that it’s the out-of-control, tax-everything, kill-business-at-every-chance, Democratically controlled Legislature. But any independent observer will note that the governor has played the Democrats at every turn to his advantage and on all the major issues — health care, energy, taxes — he has gotten his way.
Since he himself stated emphatically in his bumper sticker marketing that his reign would equal jobs, is it not a powerful enough reality that the highest rate of unemployment does not exactly compute to the governor’s core principle, that is: Jim = Jobs? Notably, the governor has a history of taking credit for things that were not of his doing, the most recent example being his claim to have started the Buy Local movement back in 2003 when it actually got under way in the ’70s. So why would it be that such a key indicator — employment — that’s currently in the toilet, would not have anything to do with him?
All these years the governor has been a very skilled political operator, perhaps one of the best Vermont has seen. He knows when to show up, he’s hired up much of the Vermont press corps to be spokespeople in key agencies, and developed the Jeezum Jim persona that’s just so darn earnest, who wouldn’t like the guy? Being that he’s spent his entire adult life in political office, one must applaud his devotion to public service — especially as a Republican, whose usual MO suggests that one should have had a job in the private sector to know how the “real world” works.
Unfortunately for some of us who’ve actually run businesses and created jobs in the private sector, the governor’s leadership has fallen far short of what is needed for the impending collapse of the cheap-gas economy. From his negligent refusal to buy the Connecticut River dams a few years ago so Vermont could have its own power sources, to fronting for an out-of-state corporation’s (Entergy’s) willingness to game its future to prioritize profits over Vermont interests, to letting the infrastructure of the state crumble around us, the governor seems more interested in short-term political gain than in making some hard calls for the long-term economic interests of this state.
There is that old saying that goes: “When you settle for less, you get less than you settled for.” Nothing could be more accurate when describing Vermonters’ overwhelming support for Jim Douglas all these years. This from the state that has demonstrated such an adept assessment of the criminally negligent and corrupt Bush administration, whom the governor has always warmly embraced unless it didn’t meet his political needs.
One thing I will never understand, as we will likely get stuck with another two years of neglect of our state, is why have Vermonters never made the connection between the fraudulent Washington Republicans and the missed opportunities of the sad, unfortunate reign of Jim Douglas all these years?
David Lines lives in Burlington.
This My Turn Opinion Piece was published in the Monday, July 7, 2008 issue of the Burlington Free Press. (link to source)