Whitman the Maverick?

John Farmer, Jr., pens an interesting piece in today’s Ledger defending his erstwhile boss, Christie Todd Whitman. Farmer remains loyal to his captain, and some of the points he raises ring true.

During the primary season, I noted, of Rudy Guiliani, that anyone The New York Times hated so passinately could not be all bad. Similarly, anyone the left reviles as much as it purports to detest Christie Whitman merits a least a civil hearing.

Farmer describes our former Governor as a "true maverick", unbeholden to the extremes of either party. But that description also fits someone lacking any guiding principles whatsoever. Liberals, like Jon Corzine, embrace a vision of New Jersey in which a huge, all encompassing-government, provides "affordable", "universal", everything, at (massive) taxpayer expense. Conservatives, contrariwise, envision a low tax, small government utopia, with few guarantees and universal opportunity. Query: to what vision of a good society does a "maverick", a "moderate", adhere?

While positively frugal by today’s standards, Whitman’s budgets were nonetheless bloated, laden with borrowing, pork, and gimmicks. Her legacy includes the insane pension bond, absurd school bonds, and the use of borrowed money for operating expenses. She genuflected to the Politically Correct politics of identity, which her silly "many faces, one family" slogan. She proposed preservation of 1,000,000 acres of open space – which might have obviated passage of the egregious Highlands Act – but never followed through with a stable and reliable source of funding, beyond borrowing.

Indeed, that lack of follow through characterized her administration, which seemed to drift, rudderless, from one year to the next, completely directionless. Only comparison to what came before, and the unmitigated disaster which followed, does Whitman look good by comparison.

But ... There’s always a huge "but" when one talks about Governor Whitman.

I served from 1996 though her departure in 2001. During the better part of three terms, I never once heard the dulcet tones of her voice on the telephone. She made essentially no effort to reach out to conservatives, to find common ground and work for a better New Jersey. Once, to much fanfare, she held a press conference supporting constitutional limitations on taxation, her passion for which failed to survive that press conference. That represented about the extent of her genuflection to conservative ideas.

Perhaps self-proclaimed "moderates" always lack "the vision thing", as another notorious "moderate" put it. If Whitman had a vision for the state, she kept it a well-guarded secret. Her Administration muddled through, holding place, without effecting any kind of substantive reforms. While cutting taxes, she failed to slay the spending dragons, setting the stage for the McGreevey-Corzine disasters which followed. Apparently, she actually believed in Mt. Laurel and Abbott; certainly, she made absolutely no effort to reform them. In short, on most things, she left the state pretty much as she had found it. While that's not horrible -- would that McGreevey, Codey, and Corzine had done the same -- it's hardly a cause for celebration.

But perhaps Whitman’s most enduring legacy is also the most pernicious: truly horrible judicial appointments, the epitome of which was Deborah Poritz. It took considerable effort to find someone worse that Robert Wilentz, but Whitman succeeded. Poritz lacked even the vaguest conception of the appropriate role of the judiciary. And, in her one "political" act – choosing the redistricting tie-breaker – she selected a man so outrageously bad that choosing Joe Roberts would have been preferable. Just this one inexcusable judicial selection totally overshadows the balance of Whitman’s otherwise undistinguished term. Truly, liberals can look back at Whitman’s term with no complaints; none of their policies took a real hit. Leaving aside abortion, Whitman well-earned lasting conservative antipathy for preserving what Farmer calls the New Jersey Supreme Court’s "progressive tradition" – that is to say, a tradition of acting like a legislature.

A great Governor leaves an enduring legacy. Whitman’s only substantive achievement – her tax cuts – failed even to survive DiFrancesco’s term, and were utterly obliterated by McGreevey. She left the state deep in debt (albeit nothing compared to what her successors have foisted upon the long-suffering taxpayers) and, thanks to Poritz, with (unconstitutional) districts that Republicans will almost certainly never win. To what accomplishment of her Administration can a State resident point with pride and say, "we owe that to Governor Whitman"? At best, she represented a pause between two profoundly destructive Democratic hurricanes.

It’s not a question, as Farmer opines, of being "in no one’s camp". If Whitman had offered some compelling vision, some guiding philosophy, some direction, she could have made her own "camp". But fits and starts, directionless advances and disorganized retreats defined her term; she utterly lacked any sense of how to make the state better, and how to turn that vision into reality. Never once did she look ten years hence and offer, "this is what I see for New Jersey, and this is how I think we ought to get there." About the best that can be said for her Administration is that, aside from Poritz and the courts, it did no lasting harm.

A conservative, handed the sort of legislative majority Whitman allegedly led, would have made Mt. Laurel and Abbott unhappy memories; enacted constitutional provisions to prevent most tax increases; brought public employee unions to heel; reined in an arrogant, extremist Court; gotten the state out of the ethnic-nose-counting business; pursued greater educational choice; etc. Under McGreevey-Codey-Corzine, we see the profound destruction liberals wreak when handed legislative majorities. Whitman, exercising what Farmer calls "independent judgment", poised neatly between the "extremes", straddling the perceived "center", decided to do, essentially, nothing.

And that’s nothing to brag about. Great leadership requires one to choose a course based upon thorough analysis, then motivate people to make that course a reality. Drifting with the tide hardly constitutes the hallmark of the sort of great leader required in uncertain times.

Hence, while Farmer gets high marks for his continued loyalty, his assertion that Whitman exercised much in the way of "independent judgment" is simply unsuppported by the facts. She exercised little leadership and the state suffered from the incoherence of her Administration. She paved the way -- and, therefore, shoulders some of the blame -- for the utter disaster which followed.