The bad news: While I got through the screener for Mark Dayton’s chat with Gary Eichten on MPR this morning, I never got on the air.
The good news: It was probably because Eichten stole my thunder on the question I gave the screener, and even the followup I had if they’d still put me on the air.
The worse news: Dayton’s answers weren’t any better than I expected. Minnesota is truly, madly, deeply screwed if he gets elected.
The mild consolation prize; by the time I got to the nearest wi-fi coffee shop, ordered a coffee and unpacked my laptop, this post was completely written in my head.
I’ll run through my questions (channeled more-or-less capably by Eichten):
Your budget is $890 million short. How do you plan on closing the gap?
Dayton had an answer. I could try to reconstruct it, but at the end of the day this classic cartoon really captures it.
Dayton’s the guy in the glasses. The equation is his “budget plan”.
No, really. His answer wasn’t a whole lot more detailed than this, and a whole lot less funny.
His answer mentioned revenue forecasts; he’s hoping that the economy closes the gap via increased tax revenues. Read: “Then A Miracle Occurs”.
I silently constructed a followup question. Eichten actually hit on this one too:
Your budget plan will have to go through a Legislature that used to be overwhelmingly DFL, but might well flip one, maybe both chambers this fall. What then?
The answer was a long one – but it basically came down to “I have many years of experience working across the aisle”.
I almost did a spit-take.
Dayton served as Auditor and Economic Development Director during the Perpich administration, when the DFL was at its extended post-Watergate high and the then-“Indpendent Republican” party was at its collaborationist nadir.
Oh, and he was a Senator during the Bush Administration. Seriously, he used his time there as an example of his “bipartisanship”.
His “bipartisanship” included accusing NORAD, and by extension the Bush Administration, of lying about its responses on 9/11, among a list of other greatest hits.
The quote of the hour, though?
“I want to appoint people who believe in government“.
The MNGOP should make up T-shirts with that quote on ’em.
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