I spent much of the last week in the company of other reporters and editors from around the state and almost all day Thursday sitting on a plastic folding chair listening to speaker after speaker talk about the state’s financial mess.
Not just any speakers: We heard from the state’s top brass including Gov. Charlie Crist and CFO Alex Sink, Senate President Jeff Atwater, House Speaker Ray Sansom, Democratic Leader Sen. Al Lawson and House Democratic Leader Rep. Franklin Sands.
My journalism friends and I talked about how Crist could still have a 67-percent approval rating while the popularity of nearly all other sitting executives and legislators in the country sinks with the economy. What follows are some of my thoughts.
Conclusion No. 1: Charlie Crist is immensely popular in the face of the state’s worst financial crisis because he is not like any of the others in style or rhetoric and is genuinely a nice man. Conclusion No. 2: He is a far better politician than his peers, and no one is a close second. Conclusion No. 3: He is able and willing to put aside political differences to get what he wants and thinks is right for the state.
This is no idle chat: Eroding popularity makes it difficult to govern or, in Florida’s case, to even effectively disagree with a popular governor. It’s what allows the governor to maintain popularity while he and lawmakers drain the Lawton Chiles Endowment, make steep cuts overall in public and higher education and programs for the disabled and so on.
The governor’s popularity and style are so different from other politicians, it makes them sound like they are, well, mere politicians with a hard-edge tone, using words that seem designed to pierce, not merely make a point, and prove their own righteousness.
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