Who’s your daddy? Trump knows it’s not him

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Say what you want about President Trump, but he’s accomplishing much of what he wants to do. Maybe that’s because he grasps a reality in today’s politics: The president is not our daddy.

That’s one role presidents have played since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created an activist government during the Great Depression, spoke to Americans through radio fireside chats, and shepherded the country through most of World War II. Before him, the president was a relatively remote part of Americans’ everyday existence. After him, presidents led the country through the Cold War. When the space shuttle exploded or terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, the president comforted the nation and led the response.

In political science terms, the president is the “head of state,” the face of the country. Unlike some other democracies, here the same person is also the head of government. Great Britain has a prime minister to wallow in the muck of politics, and a queen who sits on the throne above it all. Presidents have tried to temper their language and speak in unifying terms knowing they played both roles.

But now that the country has become more divided and doesn’t face a common enemy, it’s become harder to serve as head of state. There’s no point in trying to be America’s daddy, and besides, that’s not President Trump’s nature anyway. He’s about “winning,” not nurturing. Forty percent of the country is with him, about half is against him, and nothing much is going to change those two groups. He knows most of his 40 percent fear and dislike Nancy Pelosi more than they do Vladimir Putin. His presidency depends on holding on to that base, and that’s what he’s done. Continue reading →

Governor wants to clean up his cabinet

Cabinet

Charts provided by Arkansas Governor’s Office.

By Steve Brawner,  © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In the middle of the Governor’s Conference Room at the State Capitol is a sturdy wooden table donated by former Governor George Donaghey in 1935. It was constructed from a walnut tree planted by Donaghey’s father, Columbus, in Conway 60 years earlier.

Even if he wanted, Gov. Asa Hutchinson could not possibly fit all his Cabinet officers around it. But if he has his way, in 2020 he or the next governor could, if someone brought in half a dozen extra chairs around the perimeter.

Hutchinson on Wednesday announced a plan to reduce the number of cabinet-level state agencies from a sprawling 42 to a manageable 15. Doing so would make the governor’s cabinet the same size as the president’s. Continue reading →

Should the Supreme Court nomination be a lifetime decision?

Lake View, Supreme Court, Issue 1, KavanaughBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Regarding the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, you know as much as I do about what happened, or didn’t happen, so many years ago. Likewise, your guess is as good as mine as to what happens next. I hope the FBI investigation provides something definitive. I suspect it won’t.

If that’s the case, the few senators who haven’t made up their minds will be faced with a difficult choice. Do they appoint to the Supreme Court a man who may have once, or more than once, terribly abused another kind of power? Or do they keep a person out of office based on unproven allegations?

Instead of trying to answer questions that for the moment are unanswerable, let’s camp out on another aspect of this story: The fact that justices serve for life.  Continue reading →

The legislator without a party label

Mark McElroyBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Rep. Mark McElroy of Tillar says he’s “too conservative really to be a Democrat, but I’m too poor to be a Republican.” Earlier this year, he decided he didn’t want either label, and now he’s campaigning to see if his district’s voters will send him back to the Capitol as an independent.

McElroy spent 20 years as Desha County judge before winning election to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012. He represents District 11 in Arkansas’ southeastern corner along the Mississippi River. He’s always been elected as a Democrat, but he didn’t really fit into either party. He didn’t like the national Democrats’ stand on social issues like abortion, but he believed the Republican Party’s policies favored the top 1 percent. He chafed at morning caucus meetings where he felt he was being told how to vote, regardless of his district’s wishes. He drew a primary opponent from his own party in the last election and did again this year.

Faced with all that, this spring he decided to leave the party and become an independent. He’s the only one in the Legislature.

“I don’t see why you have to fit in,” he said Tuesday after attending a meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees. “I don’t know why you have to be a label to represent your people.” Continue reading →

How a hitchhiker saved my life on the highway

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I could have died last week picking up a hitchhiker, but not how you might think.

She was about 40 years old, and she was sitting outside a gas station with her stuff and her dog. Her face was covered with tattoos. She was headed to Oregon, but first she needed a ride to the Health Department in Little Rock. She called herself a “traveller.”

The Health Department was at 3915 W. 8th Street. With my phone almost dead, I decided to take the exit off I-30 and look for the street number rather than use the power-sapping map. But the numbers were nowhere near 3915. Driving through downtown, I keyed in the address, thinking the location must be on the other side of the Capitol. Instead, the phone’s map showed it was farther west and on the other side of I-630.

That was confusing, and meanwhile my phone had dwindled to about 1 percent battery power. I kept looking at the screen as I took the entrance ramp and began to merge onto I-630. I was transfixed by that map and the urgency of that 1 percent, until my passenger calmly said, “There’s a car parked on the side of the road.” Continue reading →