Christopher Graff is busy proving how ironic his firing by Associated Press three years ago truly was.
AP dismissed Graff as its Montpelier correspondent after he distributed over the wire a column written by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, justifiably criticizing the Bush Administration's abysmal record on questions of open government. Graff joined AP in 1978 and had been in charge of its Montpelier office for 25 years.
The irony is that Graff is every bit the country club Republican in the manner of his mentor and pal, Gov. Jim Douglas. They overlapped as undergraduates at Middlebury College and Graf succeeded Douglas as president of the campus radio station.
[Full disclosure: The presidency of the Middlebury College campus radio station is something I have in common with Douglas and Graff -- and, like Graff, I am a former Associated Press newsman. I've met both of them; Graff might remember me but I am certain Douglas would not. I'm supporting Secretary of State Deb Markowitz for governor.]
Evidence of Graff's partisan regard for the governor as the latter gears up his reelection campaign came in the July 17 edition of Vermont Business Magazine, the newspaper of record for GOP chamber-of-commerce types. "Don’t veto a Douglas re-election just yet," Graff proclaimed, a cheeky allusion to the two veto overrides Douglas suffered at the hands of the Democratically controlled Legislature this year.
What evidence does Graff marshal in favor of the ongoing political viability of Douglas as he heads into his eighth year as governor? Two things: (1) the fact that Douglas is about to become chair of the National Governors Association, and (2) the fact that Douglas was nice to a stranger at National Airport in Washington.
The latter, Graff reported, is "the story of a young woman . . . who had been juggling her baby, the full range of baby paraphernalia, and assorted carry on items as she struggled to get through the TSA screening. . . . People passed by. None offered to help. A man then stepped up and helped her and her baby through the screening area. That man was Jim Douglas.
Acording to Graff, "[t]he story speaks volumes about the personal and political success of the governor."
Really? Graff notes that the person Douglas helped, though a stranger to him, turned out to be not just a Vermonter, but a new staff person at the Vermont Business Roundtable. As Graff points out, this is evidence of the kind of right-place-at-the-right time luck that Douglas has enjoyed.
But as someone who has been that kind of frantic parent at many TSA airport screening checkpoints, I hardly think the anecdote proves much of anything about the good character of the governor.
Most of us I suspect, would come to the aid of such a struggling parent if we could. But sometimes we can't -- we've got our own kids to shepherd through the ordeal, or we have frantic connections to make, or we're dealing with any of the gazillions of other stressors that sap one's reserve of goodwill and altruism while engaged in air travel. On the other hand, Jim Douglas doesn't have such problems when he travels -- his two sons are grown up and, let's face it, when you're governor you travel as a pampered VIP.
Nor do I buy the theory that the governor of Vermont rightly assumes noone will recognize him as he passes through National Airport, particularly if he is catching a commercial flight to Burlington.
Of course it is perfectly laudable that the governor was nice to a stranger at the airport. I'm just saying that it's pretty darned superficial journalism to offer this as prime evidence of why Jim Douglas may be headed for a fifth two-year term notwithstanding the widespread unpopularity of the policy positions he imposes on Vermont as a governor from a minority party.
Here's what Graff says about Douglas becoming the third Vermont chief executive to chair of the National Governors Association in the past 28 years: "Think about that. There are 50 states. So the rule of thumb should be that a state gets one shot at chairing the NGA every 50 years. Vermont has had three chairs in fewer than 30. . . .
"A listing of recent NGA chairs – Bill Clinton, Lamar Alexander, John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson, Mark Warner, Mike Huckabee and Janet Napolitano – is a who’s who of national politicians.
"And the timing is perfect for Douglas, whose Republican colors and conservative instincts have been most apparent in the debate over the state budget and state taxes. For the next year Douglas will be working with the Obama administration on key areas of interest . . . . I am not suggesting that Douglas is a shoo-in for re-election simply because he is the chair of the National Governors Association. But I do think it will defuse Democratic criticism, and help restore the perception that Douglas can be bipartisan, and is moderate on some issues.
That's not exactly unbiased commentary. A skeptic might regard Douglas stepping forward to head the NGA as an act of consummate cynicism. Douglas's televised visibility in the gallery during President Obama's address to Congress a few weeks after the inauguration was arguably just the opening gambit in a sophisticated effort by a conservative Republican governor, in the bluest of blue states, to fool the electorate.
Jim Douglas has always made me queasy. And it's not because he's a Republican. It's because the guy radiates a kind of insincerity and unctiousness that is fully consistent with the scenario in the previous paragraph. Other governors of the region -- the undisciplined and volatile Howard Dean, the arrogant and dismissive Craig Benson, the resolutely un-partisan and coolly strategic John Lynch, the supercilious and patrician Angus King -- all seem as if the public persona and the real persona are one and the same. Among Vermont Republican governors, Dick Snelling always seemed a lot more real to me, and a lot more bipartisan, than Jim Douglas.
Why would Chris Graff be so seemingly indifferent to the reality of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign? By all rights, a chief executive seeking years nine and ten of his governorship should be engendering Douglas Fatigue in an electorate that is far to the left of him. But Vermont is a state with three political parties and the inability of the Progressive and Democratic parties to unite around an alternative is what could leave Vermont with Republican governors for decades to come.
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