Wondering just how callous and self-serving political ambition can get? Try asking Florida’s part-time Republican governor-turned U.S. Senate candidate, Charlie Crist. Or quiz the state’s occasional Attorney General-turned GOP gubernatorial candidate, Bill McCollum.
Make note that you may have trouble finding either one of them. Recent reports show that in recent years, Crist takes off the equivalent of about 10 weeks a year, while McCollum takes an average of more than 14 weeks off annually. To be fair, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Alex Sink, is reported to have taken off an average of about 9 weeks a year over the same time frame as McCollum.
Yet the work schedules of the governor and cabinet of this vast, complex and problem-riddled state are not the real issue - just some modern, bipartisan political context worth consideration.
The real issue has to do with comportment, with how you handle yourself when you are in fact in the very public process of putting in your face time, doing your job, serving at the very highest levels of state government and theoretically representing the best overall interests of all of your constituents – even when you are consumed with running for that next office, as is now the case with Florida’s governor, AG and CFO.
The real issue has to do with the damaging, downright demagogic way that the two Republican “leaders” have been comporting themselves in recent months, regarding the tortuous efforts to enact meaningful national health reform, including a new public option health plan that can compete with private, for-profit insurance plans in the free market.
Mind you, these haven’t just been the efforts of President Obama and most Democrats in Congress, but also the tireless, unpaid endeavors of countless thousands of concerned citizens in Florida, and all across America.
Since Crist’s labeling a while back of these efforts as “cockamamie”, it appears that he has logged a full workday recently enough to understand that those cockamamie efforts are finally coming to fruition. So instead of sounding smugly dismissive, Crist is now focusing his attack squarely on the public option part of the puzzle.
Think this shameless attempt to appease the anti-government, tea-bagging base of his wounded but still dangerous animal of a political party might have something to do with right wing zealot Marco Rubio well on his way to turning what was supposed to be a Crist cakewalk to the Republican senatorial nomination into a dogfight?
From the governor, this week: “My view of it is, the public option, I think, may be sort of a Trojan horse to a government takeover of health care and I think our administration has demonstrated that that’s not what we favor, nor is it what Floridians really want. I think they want good options in the private sector that offer good, affordable health care.”
Right, “good options in the private sector”, like Crist’s embarrassing 2009 Cover Florida initiative, a bogus, ineffective attempt to help the 4 million-plus Floridians with no health insurance. This shameful pass on real reform has yet to sign up even 5,000 people in nearly a year of existence – and yet Charlie keeps publicly pointing to it as his version of “good affordable health care”.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so disgraceful, a cavalier, gross and repeated misrepresentation of a phony solution to a genuine life-and-death problem – not only for the nearly 25% of Floridians who are already uninsured, but also for the millions more who are one major accident, illness, layoff or benefit cut away from joining them.
Governor Crist’s disingenuous streak has been apparent for some time. But the reprehensible tone and tenor of the governor’s recent remarks on arguably the single most important public policy matter of our time should help to finally deconstruct the oh-so-carefully constructed myth of him as a “moderate” Republican worthy of crossover support.
And it should also help get a man of character and integrity, Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek, elected as Florida’s next United States Senator.
And then there’s the nauseating case of the top law enforcement official in Florida, AG Bill McCollum, the guy who as a congressman in the 1990s helped lead extremist Republican efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton, and was rated as having one of the worst voting records in Congress on little things like environmental protection and gun control. And that’s just scratching the surface on the ridiculously inglorious career of this radical right wing lifer of a useless politician.
So, with that background in mind, here’s what Wild Bill had to say about Democratic health reform efforts back in September: “You’re proposing that everyone have a socialized government plan that limits my choice of a patient and doctor, my choice of insurance, and limiting the care you’re going to get…”
Of course, a proposed public option government health plan is in fact intended to stimulate, not stifle choice and competition. But as far as McCollum is concerned, truth is irrelevant. And without going into detail, the simple truth is, he’s lying about every one of his claims. You can look it up. He obviously didn’t.
For the sake of argument, let’s write off those who may not know or care to know when they’re being lied to. But what about all the good, old school conservatives? Don’t facts matter to them anymore? Or are they so intimidated by their more bellicose Republican brethren that they are unable or unwilling to summon up the strength and courage to speak out and demand a nobler brand of leadership?
If I were a Republican, I’d be damned disturbed by the kind of disinformation McCollum is peddling, like describing the costs of medical malpractice insurance and defensive medicine as a “huge problem”. Another lie. The truth is that independent estimates indicate perhaps a 1-2 percent impact on health care cost reduction, at best, resulting from what is called tort reform. Is it worth pursuing? Yes, and Democrats have never really argued with that, and so it will be part of the final health reform legislation. But to point to it as a huge problem while pretending that insurance industry abuses will somehow take care of themselves? Well, call it a shell game, call it a shill game, call it a con game – but see it for the dirty game it is, a game that the Attorney General of all people should not be playing for political gain.
When reporters asked McCollum about his own record on pursuing health care initiatives during over twenty years in Congress, he said, “Look, you’re asking me to cover many years being in Congress. I’m not going to do that this morning.” Guess he was in a rush to take the rest of the day off.
Of course, McCollum has been more than ready to talk – pardon me, dissemble – about the health reform policy positions of his Democratic gubernatorial rival, state CFO Sink – even though she has been cagily careful not to state specific preferences for what form reform should take, noting that for now this is a national, not a state legislative debate.
Still, McCollum had this bit of reactionary rhetorical roasting to lay on his opponent recently: “Sink is siding with the unions and their bosses – they know where she stands. On government-run health care, Sink is with the left wing unions.” Paging Joe McCarthy…
Much like Crist’s attempts to toss catnip at government haters, McCollum has continued pressing Sink to take a definitive position on a public option health plan. In a pair of idiotic, insulting publicity stunts this past week, he went so far as to ask the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who was visiting South Florida for a health reform forum, to do him the “favor” of getting Sink to state her position on the public option, to stop “ducking” the issue.
And what do you know; some freak wearing a life-sized duck suit shows up at a Sink press conference the next day. What a coincidence. The McCollum campaign claimed no prior knowledge of or involvement with the actions of the Duckman, who also remained tight-beaked on the matter.
Yes, maybe it’s funny for a moment or so – or it would be if the stakes of this pitched battle being waged over health reform weren’t so very high for so very many of us, for our families, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens.
But the stakes really are that high, and so the comportment of our supposed leaders of state government matters greatly. They are supposed to set a civil civic tone, to lead by example, rising above their personal and partisan concerns to establish a high level of honest intellectual and ideological debate – or, as has been the case with the tight-lipped but ever classy Alex Sink, they should know enough to stay the hell out of the fray until the smoke clears and we can start to figure out what it all means to Florida.
And that’s the whole point. You can tell an awful lot about people, politicians and real vs. supposed leaders, by how they react to pressure, by how much empathy they show for those around them, by whether or not they’re willing to stretch the limits of ethical behavior in order to achieve their own personal aspirations.
Need I say more about what has happened to the Republican Party, in Florida, as in the rest of the country?
The Mark Weaver Show welcomes these good new writers joining the FPC blog. Love the energy.
Good work, as always, Dan. Keep it up.