With his popularity about the same as a
hairy wart, Gov. Tom Corbett (R-Pa.) had to make some critical changes in his
administration if he has any hope of winning a second term in 2014.
There are many things he could have done.
He could have increased funding to
education. Shortly after he took office, he slashed educational funding,
including half the budget of the 14 state-owned universities. But he decided
education wasn’t all that important.
He could have restored some of the budget
to child care services, programs for the disabled, and the state parks and forests.
But, he didn’t do that.
Tom Corbett could have made his statement
for austerity by reducing his out-of-state travel, which included trips to
Chile, Brazil, France, and Germany. But, he didn’t do that either.
He didn’t have to buy a $265,000 vacation
condo in Hilton Head, South Carolina. That got him a double dose of stupid.
First, he has been taking the media on state-sponsored trips all over
Pennsylvania to show how great a state it is, and what a wonderful place it is
to vacation. And then, as if buying a vacation home in South Carolina while
governor wasn’t bad enough, he just happened to forget to include that in his
annual Code of Conduct statement. That Code, begun under the governorship of
Dick Thornburgh, requires all members of the executive branch to disclose all
real estate holdings, with the exception of the primary residence.
Not
long after becoming governor, he announced he wanted to privatize just about
everything—the turnpike, liquor stores, and even the lottery, leading the
people to wonder why he became governor if his wish was to eliminate government.
Alas, he found that he couldn’t even convince his own Republican legislature to
follow his path. As for the lottery, a Franklin & Marshall poll revealed
that only 18 percent of the voters thought the lottery should be run by a
private company, especially the foreign-owned company he had hand-picked.
He could have saved the state at least
$500,000 if he didn’t sue the NCAA to overturn the sanctions against Penn
State. He may have believed that since he was on the Penn State board of
trustees he had standing to sue. Alas, the former attorney general—under whose
watch the crimes were committed, but Jerry Sandusky wasn’t arrested—probably
just had a slight “mental lapse.” Penn State, in spite of its name, is not a
Pennsylvania state-owned university, but a private university. Nevertheless,
Corbett’s attempt to placate outraged PennState fans, most of whom seemed to
throw scorn his way for how he failed to prosecute Sandusky and who manipulated
the firing of Joe Paterno, became nothing less than an embarrassment when a
federal court threw out his suit even before it got to the discovery phase. In
doing so, Corbett single-handedly made the NCAA look like a sympathetic figure.
There’s also a lot he didn’t have to say,
but did.
He didn’t have to
say that he had no Latinos on his staff, and then suggest, “If you can find us
one, please let me know.” For the record, Governor, there are 800,000 Latinos
living in Pennsylvania, and none are hiding in caves.
In support of proposed legislation that
would have required all women undergoing abortions, even if they are to save
her life, he didn’t have to support a demand that physicians run invasive tests
and then be required to tell women the results; for the women, who had no
desire to see the ultrasound, he dismissed their concerns as, “You just have to close your eyes.”
He didn’t have to
say the reason why there was unemployment was that employers had trouble
finding workers who could pass a drug test. Of course, that sound byte, with no
evidence, could have been designed to cover up the reality that when Corbett
took office, the state ranked seventh in job creation. This year, it’s in 49th
place.
He didn’t have to
be the gas industry’s cheerleader by claiming there were 240,000 new jobs
because the gas industry came to frack the state. The only problem with his
numbers is that it is about 10 times more than reality, according to the
Keystone Research Center.
With all the cuts to social services, he didn’t have
to alienate the people by extending a $1.65 billion tax credit to a foreign
company, Royal Dutch Shell, which owns or leases almost one million
Pennsylvania acres, and is already the world’s leading corporation in terms of
profits. Corbett may have believed extending that huge tax credit was good
business, and would spur job creation and the economy. But, there is another
probability for his generosity—one of Corbett’s largest campaign contributors
is billionaire Terrence Pegula who sold his
company to Royal Dutch Shell in 2010 for $4.7 billion.
Tom Corbett could have restored the $2
million that was originally budgeted for public health education and studies of
the effects of fracking—but which he cancelled entirely. But, obviously, he didn’t
think studying the health effects from fracking was worth alienating the oil
and gas industry. That would be the same industry that had given him about $1.8
million in campaign contributions.
Yes, there is a lot that Tom Corbett could have done
to improve his popularity. But, what he did was to shuffle his top advisors and
change his public relations staff, a couple of whom went directly into PR
agencies, where they represent the oil and gas industry.
There is a basic principle of PR: Sell the
Sizzle Not the Bacon.
In Tom Corbett’s case, the sizzle has
already fizzled—and the bacon has now shrunk to about 30 percent of what it
once was.
[Walter
Brasch’s latest book is Fracking
Pennsylvania, available at
amazon;.com, www.greeleyandstone.com,
and local bookstores.]
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