Another political misstep

Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
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Bad political move on the part of the new Lucente-Williams-Allen front group regarding who will be our next vice mayor.

“I don’t see it as a possibility,” would-be-mayor Tim Williams told The News Leader for a story published in this morning’s edition, regarding the talk that Lorie Smith could be elected vice mayor at tomorrow’s city-council reorganization meeting.

“I think it certainly should be one of the three of us, mayor and vice mayor,” Williams told the Leader.

If they were listening to me, they would elect Smith vice mayor by acclimation, and here’s why. Every time some dope like me would offer criticism of this decision or that move or some other action on the part of the new council as having been done without consulting with the political minority, they could point to Vice Mayor Smith.

“We set a bipartisan tone the first minute that we were in the majority,” they could retort, and what could I or anybody do to argue against that?

The idea is far from being a new one, for what it’s worth. Our most recent two presidents, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, each named to their Cabinets a member of the opposing political party. Bush even swept into office in 2000 on the strength of a record of working in a bipartisan manner as governor of Texas in the 1990s.

More telling about Bush, in particular, is what he did in his second term, misreading his re-election as a mandate for sweeping change that led his administration in a policy direction that foretold the sweeping change that was the 2006 midterms.

I don’t know that we can rightly expect these guys to learn too many lessons from recent history, though.

I mean, seriously, here I was afraid that they’d move in that direction just to provide themselves insulation from partisan criticism, and make my job a lot harder in so doing.

I’m assuming an awful lot there, ain’t I?