Glory Days Will Pass You By
By Mitch Berg
Lori Sturdevant, Strib columnist and unofficial DFL public relations writer, is doing her job: leading the DFL’s counterspin effort after their perceived defeat on the budget and unallotment battle.
No – of course the budget battle was never about making sure that no matter how tough times get for Minnesotans, government never wants for a single thing.
Nooooooo. It was about jobs for all the rest of you!
Déjà vu hit me in the corridor outside the governor’s office Tuesday, as my compatriots pressed Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak for an “ain’t it awful” quote about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s plan to yank another $200 million away from Minnesota cities…He kept pounding: Pawlenty’s unallotment will eliminate “a dramatic number” of Minnesota jobs. It is “a one-time fix that doesn’t create jobs.” The city of Minneapolis has had a better record of creating jobs in the last eight years than the governor has had for the state.
What an incredibly dishonest statement; Minnesota as a whole was in a recession eight years ago, and is in one today, and in between spent some time with among the lowest unemployment rates in the country. If Minneapolis did “better”, it’s because of a statistical technicality.
Does Sturdevant know this? Who knows? But nothing – not even a complete rewrite of history – is going to stand in her way:
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Shades of 1981-82.
Minnesota was mired in what was the biggest post-World War II recession until the current one came along. Every story out of the State Capitol contained bad news. Schools laid off teachers, college tuition climbed, cities cut library hours and parks programs, taxes rose. Beleaguered lawmakers would barely catch their breath before red ink returned, and they’d have to cut again. It was dispiriting business.
Then in April 1982, back from four years of political exile in Vienna came a talkative former governor who said Minnesota could do a lot more to create jobs.
As Rudy Perpich sold that idea, the gloom began to lift. People didn’t know whether Perpich’s ideas would work. But they wanted to believe that state government could be an aid, not a hindrance, to the climb out of recession. Instead of seeing state government as sick and prone to inflicting its misery on its citizens, people began to think that under the right governor, state government could be part of the cure.
That hopeful idea returned Perpich to office in 1982. And whether or not his pro-jobs policies did the trick, they coincided with one of Minnesota’s best economic interludes in the 20th century.
Perpich had also presided onver one of Minnesota’s worst interludes – the mid-seventies. Hm. What could have been different between the two terms?
What happened in national politics, and with the national economy, along about the end of Perpich’s ’82-86 term? What rising tide lifted all the little socialistic boats, including Perpich and Sturdevant’s?
Chew on that for a while, Lori.
It might be that the DFLers who want to replace Pawlenty are channeling the thinking of the last DFLer to serve in the Capitol’s southwest corner office.
What? “Elect a tax-and-spend hamster who emanates goofy cheer, and pray the national economy picks up?”
