To Ploy Or Not To Ploy
So state Auditor Thomas M. Salmon offers to play referee in the budget impasse between Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and Salmon’s fellow-Democrats who run the Legislature, and what does he get for his troubles? A lot of grief about engaging in a political ploy.
A foolish attack, for at least two reasons, neither of which is that his offer is not a political ploy. Of course it is. The two reasons are: (1) There’s nothing wrong with political ploys; (2) As political ploy, this one seems just as likely to backfire as to do him any good.
Say this for Salmon, though. At least he put his views about the state budget on the State Auditor’s web site for all the world to see. Contrast this with Douglas, whose 25-page “budget alternative” released last week is nowhere to be found on any official state web site. Oh, if you Google around enough, you’ll be able to find it, so it’s not exactly being hidden. But the Douglas policy seems to be ‘Openness ‘R’ Not Us.’
(The sites of the Legislative leaders aren’t very informative, either, but legislative schemes end up as…believe it or not! Legislation. As in, an actual bill, officially introduced into either the House or Senate, and available word-for-word verbatim, as lawmakers like to say in that redundant way they have, via the Legislature’s web site.)
OK, back to Salmon’s offer, which is easy to describe because it’s vague, and which is not necessary to describe in detail because nothing is going to come of it. It isn’t that his proposal has no substance. It’s that the little bit of substance it has is substantively incomprehensible.
Asked during an interview on WCAX-TV (Channel 3) why he thought his intervention could help, Salmon said , “I think I’m optimistic that in the most difficult environments , when people finally get to a level of simplicity, honesty, and urgency they can fix a problem.”
Everybody got that?
In some ways, Salmon really is neutral. Thus he opposes the one tax increase idea supported by both the Legislature and the Governor. In the statement he posted on his web site May 13, Salmon comes out squarely against “sin taxes” on alcohol (and presumably, by extension, tobacco), citing an un-named business owner who told him “The last time Vermont added a tax to beer my sales went down 17 percent, we all know where they went; across the river to New Hampshire.”
Well, if this is Salmon the public policy analyst, perhaps we’d all be better off just sticking to the politics of the matter, even though he assured the Channel 3 interviewer that,” I’m not that concerned about my political career. I’m really not”
He should be, and without shame. Politicians perform a service when they engage in political ploys. They send signals about what they think is important. They provide some insight into their intellect and their attitudes. Besides, Americans like a person who grabs an opportunity when it presents itself. Nothing ventured…
Salmon’s problem here is not that he comes across as an opportunist. It’s that he comes across as very platitudinous and slightly Republican. The former is rarely a political liability. Neither is the latter unless the politician who sounds slightly Republican is a Democrat who will one day have to win a primary in his own party.
Salmon’s problem is that the only way anyone can mediate between Douglas and the Democrats is to convince the Democrats to move closer to the Douglas position. That explains why Douglas immediately took advantage of Salmon’s move to tell the Democratic leaders, “Auditor Salmon’s offer provides a great opportunity to come together and get the job done for the people we serve. As an independently elected statewide official responsible for monitoring state finances, I believe his insight could be very helpful in moving our discussion forward.”
Forget for a moment that this statement proves that our Governor needs an English teacher. Check that second sentence again. In it, Douglas is calling himself the Auditor (“As in independently elected statewide official…I…”). He didn’t mean that, of course. Salmon is the auditor. Douglas is the (semi-literate?) governor.
But for now we’re just looking at the politics. In a stalemate between Democrats and a Republican, a Democratic official has made a proposal which undercuts his fellow-Democrats and is embraced by the Republican.
What the Democrats want to do is override Douglas’s promised veto of the budget bill. Asked by Channel 3’s Kristin Carlson why he doesn’t support his party here, Salmon said, “a budget override may be a short term victory , but we’ve got many, many challenges and you can call them battles. But the sooner we line up as a team on some of this, the better.”
Assuming that means anything at all, it’s a plausible policy outlook. What it is not is a good strategy for winning a primary. In Vermont as elsewhere, the primary voters in both parties tend to be the truest believers. With a few exceptions, that means the most conservative Republicans and the most liberal Democrats. Right now, those liberal Democrats are solidly behind their party’s legislative leaders and solidly opposed to Douglas on the budget fight. Actually, so are the mildly liberal Democrats. Salmon has made no friends among them.
But isn’t Salmon being a careful moderate, and therefore appealing to the middle-of-the-road voters – the ones who decide elections – the ones who really want Democrats and Republicans to work together and to avid partisan bickering?
Maybe. But first of all a candidate doesn’t get to try to appeal to those moderate middle-of-the-roaders until he’s won his party’s primary. Besides, those folks may simply not be paying very much attention to what’s going on right now. Even in relatively sophisticated Vermont, state government and politics is an insiders game. The politicians, the lobbyists, the interest groups, the reporters and a devoted but rather small band of political junkies pay attention.
Everyone else? Probably most of them do not know who Tom Salmon is. Or House Speaker Shap Smith, either. Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin might be a bit more recognizable because he’s been in office longer and once ran for lieutenant governor. But he’s hardly a household name, either. Most of those middle-of-the-road voters are probably paying more attention to the recession, the President, the North Korean nuclear test, even the NBA playoffs and the Red Sox than they are to the state budget impasse.
It isn’t that people are entirely indifferent. Almost nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But by now they might have figured out that under either the Douglas or the Democratic plan, most of them won’t. Besides, according to national polls (and there’s no reason to think Vermonters differ on this point), most people are about as opposed to budget cuts in most social programs as they are to tax increases.
If the Democrats succeed in overriding Douglas’s veto, Salmon’s offer to mediate will be irrelevant. If they fail, Salmon’s offer will almost surely be…just as irrelevant. Neither Smith nor Shumlin nor any rank-and-file Democratic lawmaker has shown any interest in taking the Auditor up on his offer.
As befits an auditor, Salmon is a CPA. Perhaps, for his own sake, he should have kept that green eyeshade on and stuck to his ledger books.
Tags: Tom Salmon
