Newspapers are easy to manufacture. All you need is a Cohen-like attraction.
Legislation isn’t like that. Manufacturing legislation is often challenging, if not actually agonizing.
You must please your legislative colleagues; you must satisfy 15 well-connected lobbyists; you must at least pretend to listen to your constituents; and you must represent the “best interests” of the state and the region and your town.
That’s not to say that hanging around the General Assembly is agony. You do get to spend (oh, excuse me, I meant “invest”) other people’s money, without much accountability. You have access to state-employee health insurance borrowed from some socialist nation. You get paid a bit of a salary.
And you experience the historic moments of putting your stamp of approval on, or curbing the excesses of, government as we know it.
Is state legislating a charming, fulfilling, rewarding occupation or avocation or hobby? Sure. Except for the yucky stuff.
“Yucky” is a political science term that refers to legislation or legislative proposals that are so, well, yucky, that legislators tend to run from the room screaming at the very thought of them — after they have begged legislative leaders to kill the bills and bury them in the back yard, right next to the existing boxes labeled “abortion” and “death penalty.”
The yucky stuff ranges from the compelling to the mundane, with the underlying theme that the final vote is bad enough — but the debate will be even worse, no matter which “side” you are on.
When some demented third-grade teacher inspires her class to “lobby” for the three-eyed green frog to be named the State Animal, sparking an outcry from supporters of the two-headed squirrel, this becomes one of the yucky legislative exercises.
When the mischievous former Gov. John Rowland crafted a “school choice” voucher bill, the main objective was to force a public hearing, which would have required the Democrats to face an audience full of blacks and Hispanics, supporting the idea, teacher unions be damned. That would have been yucky. The bill got killed, soon after conception, and before a public hearing. Sort of like a legislative abortion. Oops.
The most entertaining of the yucky stuff often falls between compelling and trivial.
The best are the medical turf-war battles. Can the dental hygienists do some of the things that only dentists can do? Can the nurse anesthetists do some things that only anesthesiologists can do? Can the optometrists do some things that only ophthalmologists can do?
The legislators hate this stuff. No obvious villains. The public is not marching in the streets. And the subject tends to be a bit complex and technical. It is yucky.
Even as we speak, legislators are trembling at the potential for a teeth-whitening dispute to eventually cross their desks. The Connecticut Dental Commission, blessed by the power invested in it by the State of Connecticut and God, is being sued by teeth-whitening entrepreneurs, who are, at least in theory, forbidden from selling the supplies and secret codes and services that would empower us to whiten our teeth.
The Libertarian-leaning lawyer-cowboys from the Institute for Justice, who devote much of their time and attention to torturing various states about matters of regulation and licensing, are handling the case. The IJ boys are very good at cranking out clever, embarrassing public relations; at some point, someone will suggest that the legislators put everyone out of their misery and celebrate a free market in teeth whitening.
The debate will be yucky. What fun.
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Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
