Our Views: Jindal learns half a lesson
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In cases of political error, it’s important to offer contrition early and clearly. If it’s not offered, the voters will beat it out of you, anyway.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has learned only half his lesson. He still has a lot to learn.
When he said he would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of his campaign promise to “prohibit” pay raises that don’t meet basic standards of decency, the governor made a mistake. As a young man — particularly, perhaps, as a young man — he is proud, and it is difficult for him to admit error.
The post-legislative news conference showed his pride a bit humbled, but not much. “I have learned my lesson going forward,” he said. As contrition, it was a half-hearted effort.
The governor repeated his appalling excuse for green-lighting a pay raise of more than 100 percent for legislators: “I do not want to give anyone an excuse for opposing my important reforms.”
That doesn’t make sense. If your reforms are important, and you fight for them, the public isn’t going to blame you when you lose. And governors win, more often than they lose.
It is not as though the governor was, in a year of huge budget surpluses, asking for a lot of sacrifices anyway. He didn’t have to raise taxes, the usual type of heavy legislative lifting that might — not surely, but might — justify in the public mind a legislative pay deal.
The Jindal administration does not ask for a heck of a lot in general. Its so-called top priority during the recent legislative session was a reorganization of work-force programs. The bill got very little opposition.
The public blames you, Gov. Jindal, when you — Mr. Principle on the campaign trail — act without regard to your promises or to the expectations you raised.
Paying for your programs with an atrocious pay raise promise to lawmakers in another context would be called giving in to extortion. That is not in character with the Bobby Jindal voters admired before the pay raise deal became public.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has learned only half his lesson. He still has a lot to learn.
When he said he would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of his campaign promise to “prohibit” pay raises that don’t meet basic standards of decency, the governor made a mistake. As a young man — particularly, perhaps, as a young man — he is proud, and it is difficult for him to admit error.
The post-legislative news conference showed his pride a bit humbled, but not much. “I have learned my lesson going forward,” he said. As contrition, it was a half-hearted effort.
The governor repeated his appalling excuse for green-lighting a pay raise of more than 100 percent for legislators: “I do not want to give anyone an excuse for opposing my important reforms.”
That doesn’t make sense. If your reforms are important, and you fight for them, the public isn’t going to blame you when you lose. And governors win, more often than they lose.
It is not as though the governor was, in a year of huge budget surpluses, asking for a lot of sacrifices anyway. He didn’t have to raise taxes, the usual type of heavy legislative lifting that might — not surely, but might — justify in the public mind a legislative pay deal.
The Jindal administration does not ask for a heck of a lot in general. Its so-called top priority during the recent legislative session was a reorganization of work-force programs. The bill got very little opposition.
The public blames you, Gov. Jindal, when you — Mr. Principle on the campaign trail — act without regard to your promises or to the expectations you raised.
Paying for your programs with an atrocious pay raise promise to lawmakers in another context would be called giving in to extortion. That is not in character with the Bobby Jindal voters admired before the pay raise deal became public.
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