It is unwise to try to gauge the tenor of an entire legislative session by dropping in during the frantic few last days. People have grown tired and cranky. They want to go home. They’re angry at the other party and at the other chamber. There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it.
Not everyone feels that way. There are the inevitable, and indomitable, optimists. But they’re outnumbered by the pessimists.
Lobbyists at this point tend to be pessimists. Lobbyists and legislative staff are the only ones anymore who have any long-term legislative history. Things are not like the good old days, they say.
One lobbyist summed up the 2009 session as “horrible.” “The worst I’ve seen,” said another. “Sucks,” said a longtime legislative staffer.
And yet there are the chirpy ones, too — Democrats, mostly, because they’ve been running everything for the past couple of years. “I don’t see how it could have been much better,” said the governor’s chief of staff, Jim Carpenter. And even one veteran lobbyist said he saw some “good public-policy achievements” this year.
The good stuff, from this optimistic perspective, included the FASTER transportation plan, some health-care initiatives and managing to balance the budget without cutting too much despite a wretched economy.
The bad stuff? Well, it was mostly a matter of behavioral issues. It seems as if politics and governance in these divisive times can be reduced to a couple of advertising slogans. For the Republicans, it’s “Just Say No.” For the Democrats, it’s “Just Do It.” Just do it, and never mind what it costs. Just say no, regardless of what the benefits might have been.
Those attitudes are painfully apparent in Washington. And more and more they’re seeping down into Colorado politics, too.
Single-party rule makes things worse. The Democrats, when they were in the minority, used to be more reasonable. When they first got control of the legislature, and then the governorship, they were unaccustomed to power and a little timid. Now they’re just as high-handed as the Republicans were after all those decades of GOP rule. At least the Republicans were kept in check, most of the time, by Democrats sitting in the governor’s office.
Through most of the Bill Owens years, though, the Nikes were on the other foot, or at least the slogan was. The Republicans in charge of everything were just doing it, trying to enact as much of their party platform as possible. And the Democrats were just saying no, but they didn’t have the votes, or the veto power, to do much about it.
Term limits have dumbed everything down. It’s eight years and out, or move to the other chamber. It is no longer necessary to pay homage to the leadership; they’re short-timers. It’s not necessary to learn, or easy to forget, the protocols of civility. Legislators don’t have time to develop long-range thinking. The veteran lobbyists have to continually update their Rolodexes; the new ones — or so the old ones complain — have lousy ethics.
Thanks to citizen initiatives, legislators have very little power anymore. They can’t budget effectively; the big-ticket items are reduced to formulas. Legislators need voter approval to raise taxes. They can’t stay around long enough to become real experts in anything. The absence of power has made them more partisan, living by slogans instead of statesmanship.
On the last day of the session, it is a tradition for the minority party to spoof the majority with a series of skits and songs called the Hummers. “Even the Hummers aren’t funny anymore,” one lobbyist complained to me. “They’re just mean.”
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
