A public policy think tank pal in Washington once told me that being interviewed on television was the perfect image-builder. Within minutes of your appearance, friends told you how smart and impressive you were — even as they had already begun to forget exactly what it was you had to say.
He was really right about that. I was on ABC’s ‘Nightline” once, and interviewed once on the NBC Evening News. Friends were mightily impressed, but it was clear that by the next morning, my particular bits of wisdom were already forgotten.
Politicians know that most of their public remarks are all about image and attitude, not details. If Ronald Reagan says, “tear down this wall,” people will remember, but most of the specifics coughed up by political leaders are lost in the mental shuffle of daily life.
It’s much the same in business. Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is always much anticipated, not so much for financial detail, but because it is so funny and honest.
And what of political CEOs?
Consider Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s “State of the State” address in February — thought at the time to be a workmanlike performance. Beyond the style, how has the substance stood up to the reality of the recent revised budget agreement that staggered out of the General Assembly?
Was there soaring rhetoric in that February chat about deferring pension payments and cobbling together one-time revenues to make believe the state has a balanced budget? Probably not.
She spoke of “challenge” and “anxiety” and “unparalleled struggles.” She urged a big, bipartisan hug to get things done. The legislative Republicans (a very small cult) applauded at the time — although now they are in a collective pout, because Rell and the Democratic leaders froze the GOP out of the final negotiations.
What was memorable about the Rell talk was the tug-of-war between her notions of using government to “help” Connecticut residents with jobs and credit and tax incentives and other accoutrements of “big government” — while at the same time, scolding one and all for state government spending and borrowing that was irresponsible and unsustainable.
The final product in May? Irresponsible and unsustainable.
And that is why looking at the “State of the State” text is so interesting. You could see (and hear) the train wreck coming. Most of the remedies, old and new, that Rell touted were short-term fidgets (save the dairy farmers, expand the sales tax exemption for “green” technology) with none of the ideological, philosopher-king rhetoric about smaller government and whacking long-term, imbedded expenses.
The legislative Republicans hinted that they wanted to do some real restructuring this year, not simply to get out from under the short-term deficit fiasco, but to really change the way the state does business.
But as the Rell “State of the State” address indicated through omission, Connecticut is neither poor enough, complex enough, not breathtakingly dysfunctional enough to embrace a top-to-bottom, small-government-is-better revolution — at least not without forceful political leadership from the top.
The Jodi Rell of May sounded like the cranky Jodi that the state probably needed in February. “I would have preferred to see more cutting in state spending and greater reductions in the overall size and scope of state government.”
Well, no one will remember her fightin’ words as the state copes with looming, multi-million-dollar deficits in the years ahead.
Like Cohen, Rell will be just another pretty face.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
