During a news conference yesterday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in discussing the GOP’s unhappiness with the left-wing Democrat activist the governor has chosen as his chief of staff, asked his party faithful to not judge him by his hires, but by his actions.
Here is the problem. Schwarzenegger cannot and will not be aware of every decision Ms. Kennedy will make in his name. She will take action, on his behalf, that will not reflect the principles for
which people elected him. This is a woman who has been a true-believer and a party activist for the other side. Susan Kennedy may have made big business happy during her term on the PUC and she may be smart as a whip, but in the end, she is a die-hard, committed liberal.
I didn’t think that Schwarzenegger would ever govern from the right. He clearly considers himself a fiscal conservative and a social moderate. But Kennedy is no moderate. At least she has not been in her previous political life.
As someone who has worked in both the governor’s office and several state agencies, I know that there are many decisions made in state government offices of which a governor is never aware. It’s fine when the people serving the governor are very clear about his policies, priorities and principles. But when appointees are not clear where a chief executive might come down on even the most fundamental issue, decisions will be made that may or may not reflect the governor’s desires. When the voters elect a governor, they expect him to hire people who will carry out the agenda he has laid out in the campaign. It is mind boggling that Susan Kennedy will suddenly embrace the reform agenda that her new boss has spent his first years in office trying to implement. So either he is abandoning the guiding principles of his Administration (or at least the principles that the public thinks are key to his leadership) or she is abandoning her long-held liberal beliefs about the size and role of government.
The only bright spot in this whole situation is how angry Bob Mulholland is over the appointment. It can’t be all bad if it makes Mulholland mad.