Today’s news is all about Crusty (the nickname that local commentators have given Brown) or one of his aides muttering that eMeg is a “whore” in an inadvertently recorded conversation.
My reaction is a little contrarian on this, for two reasons – I think it’s nice to see politicians when they are human (and they’re all human) – and I really, really dislike the “cloak of perfection” we expect our candidates to wrap around themselves.
But mostly, it’s about substance. The call that Brown was making was to the Los Angeles Police Protective League – the union for LAPD officers – and the issue was that they were endorsing Meg because she carved out an exemption in pension reform for law enforcement.
With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.
“Do we want to put an ad out? … That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be … that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give ’em, will cut them a deal, but I won’t,” Brown said.
So for all the folks hammering on my endorsement of him in the comments below…how do you square that circle??
Here is Brown – doing the right thing and challenging the sacred cows – and here’s Meg, milking them.
Brown is a much more complex figure than he is being credited as on the right. And from my point of view – when I make my vote – it’s about the bet that Brown is more likely to take on the sacred cows effectively than eMeg, who has shown both that she’s likely to be ineffective, and that she’s scared of them.
–
First rule of holes. You forgot it.
This is what it all comes down to?
Brown is a much more complex figure than he is being credited as on the right. And from my point of view – when I make my vote – it’s about the bet that Brown is more likely to take on the sacred cows effectively than eMeg, who has shown both that she’s likely to be ineffective, and that she’s scared of them.
I’m sorry, AL. You’re essentially saying that with Brown, you feel a Hope that he will make a Change. If your semi-regular readers are yelling at you right now, it’s because you can’t see the parallels – that you’re again voting against the Republican and groping for reasons why the Democrat might not be so bad. I’ve got no problem with you voting against Whitman if you’re convinced that she’ll be an active catastrophe for your state, but you’re insulting our intelligence if you ask us to believe that Brown is Obama II – but this time it’ll be different. (To be fair, anyone who tries to sell Whitman as Arnold II gets laughed out of the room, too.)
I might actually entertain an argument that Brown is a long-term, strategic better choice for California than Whitman, the way I entertained a similar argument for Obama – that he’ll overplay his hand and precipitate a healthy backlash much earlier than the trench warfare resulting from a Republican executive. But “he can go to China” won’t wash, and you’re losing your argument by focusing on it.
Cheers
— perry
This isn’t purely about what Brown wants to do, even if you posit that he does indeed want to do it.
When the rubber meets the road, will Brown bring the hammer down on the state legislators of his own party and the special interests that will be banging on his door? Because if the answer is no, nothing is going to get done. You don’t get points for good intentions.
I’d say there is an advantage to a Whitman failure- it would create a train wreck in Sacramento that would become impossible for the voters to ignore.
On the other hand Brown could well limp along allowing the state to tank further still. Brown is probably charismatic enough to keep the machine running right up until it flies apart.
Fine, Marc. He’ll touch them. He’ll raise retirement from 55 to 60. He’s stated he’s going to do it through collective bargaining. What’s he going to give back? He’s going to change things to a high-3 calculation instead of final year (good lord, how in the world did that happen? If I doubted that California was run by corrupt fools, that settled it). But is he going to increase the multiplication constant by 35%, like he did in Oakland? What is he going to give back to them? You know it will be something; I am not impressed with your reasoning on this topic, but I still believe that you’re not a complete and utter fool.
I don’t know what your problem is with Whitman; so far your ‘reasoning’ has gone back and forth between this one, single example which is strongly counterindicated by historical fact; and a silly claim that Brown, he of “whore” and “Goebbels”, is a superior communicator. Only the East German judge likes that move.
You don’t have an argument. You continue to piss on my leg. It’s a bright, clear sunshiny day outside, so stop telling me it’s raining.
“both of them had zero political experience, and as it turns out, zero political savvy.”
I’m sorry Marc, you know I love you, but that phrase is likely to get a candidate more votes at this stage, than the reverse. I personally have no idea who to vote for, since the whole system makes my skin crawl at this point. I wish I had enough mileage points to head to Washington for the rally to restore sanity. At least that would be more fun than depressing.
And quit trying to play fast and losse with my pension, dammit!
A.L.,
I’m having trouble following your argument, here, for two reasons.
First, on the issue of communication, maybe it’s because I read different blogs than you do. (I assume– I assume we all read at least slightly different blogs.) Brown may have managed to attenuate the discussion of the “whore” comments in some media, and among some people, but certainly not among all.
Unless you’re nearly superhumanly gifted at communication (Chris Christie, Barack Obama, etc) when someone serves up red meat to your opposition, you really can’t do much about it except let it play out. I don’t think that level of media skill should be a requirement for elected office– making it a requirement may actually be harmful because you get people more interested in communication than in execution.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because neither of them fit the bill, here.
Second, in terms of practical governance, communication is an important skill, but it’s important because it’s a pathway to a more fundamental skill– coalition management. If you don’t build friendly coalitions or break hostile ones, you don’t get anything done, no matter how good your ideas are.
Now, on this pension issue, we seem to have two basic approaches:
Brown wants to spread the pain as evenly as possible, by redefining as many pensions as possible, all at once.
Whitman wans to spread the pain a bit more narrowly, by redefining pensions for everyone except public safety responders.
The coalition in place right now is the entrenched spectrum of interests that wants those pension plans to remain unchanged. Brown’s plan only mobilizes that coalition against him, once he’s in office. Whitman’s plan at least tries to disrupt that coalition. To my eyes, Brown fails at basic strategy, here, whereas Whitman seems to understand the dynamic and wants to exploit it to get something imperfect done rather than nothing.
Marcus Vitruvius,
You’re having trouble following his argument because it’s nonsense. It provides no workable standard except to safeguard AL’s prejudices.