Gov. M. Jodi Rell was awakened early one recent morning by her husband’s snoring. She cut out his tongue and pushed him on the floor.
Then, she went downstairs and bit the head off a rooster that had crowed a bit too early and a bit too often.
And when the family cat came over to beg for food, Rell kicked him in the butt and told him, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Go catch a mouse and make yourself useful.”
And on her way to the State Capitol that day, she ordered her state police driver to pull his gun and blow out the tires of the car in front of them, because it was dawdling in the left lane.
After striding into the Capitol and berating the security guard for not sitting up straight, she went to her desk, picked up her quill pen, and vetoed the legislation that would have required chain restaurants to post the calorie counts for double cheeseburgers and stuff.
Good morning, Connecticut. There’s a new boss in town. Grrrrrr.
The budget angst, the bill signed and bills vetoes, all the angry press conferences held — nothing that went on this year at the Capitol was as profound as Rell’s veto of the calorie bill.
It’s not that the legislation was significant. It was not. It’s not that Rell is in the pocket of lobbyists from McDonald’s and Burger King. She is not.
No, the veto was a signal that Rell has awakened from her League of Women Voters-style coma as governor and is ready to party.
Every governor, especially when the opposing party controls the legislature, should lob an occasional hand grenade into the marketplace of ideas — just because it is fun and, perhaps, just because it might spark a bit of public debate about philosophical things that aren’t usually on the agenda.
Rell remains wildly popular, not so much because she is a philosopher queen, but because the Democrats are so inept at hiding their agenda: the care and feeding of state employee labor unions.
Rell’s no-new-taxes thing probably won’t fly, in part because of the financial realities of a tax-and-spend state, and in part, because her heart isn’t really in it. She does not champion small government and privatized everything and oh, yes, a healthy Republican Party. No, she has been the stern Earth Mother and that has been sort of good enough.
But the calorie-posting veto suggests that there’s a new day dawning. Jodi just wants to have fun.
The legislation would have required posting of calorie counts for everything on a chain-restaurant menu, which Rell, in her veto message, characterized as a “growing and troubling tendency by some to legislate nearly every aspect of our lives and society, including personal responsibility.”
Right On, Jodi Rell. You are a Libertarian Wonder Woman.
Perhaps even more profound than the Libertarian flavor of the veto message was the addition of just a bit of hostile sarcasm. Is this the Jodi we know and love? “Does it come as a surprise to anyone that a vegetable salad is healthier and more nutritious than a bacon cheeseburger?”
Tune in next week. Gov. Rell will explain that grocery stores should be allowed to sell wine, because it’s none of the state’s damn business where you buy your wine.
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Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
