Shumlin-MacLean ill-timed facepalmer

I’d planned to post an interview with Speaker Shap Smith today, but I guess that needs to wait, given the photojournalism du jour.

Hm. Let’s make a list, eh wot?

1. Okay, here’s the way the “lovable rogue” thing works. First of all, it doesn’t work as well in Vermont as, say, Louisiana. To the (somewhat uncharted) degree it does, it requires distance. It doesn’t play well at the time a pol is lovably rogueing, but if it’s a part of somebody’s past, it can take on a cutesy folkiness (or is that folky cutesiness?) In other words, this picture will be long forgotten by the time it could do any political damage, beyond being a footnote in the Shummy mystique, such as it is.

2. We can knock the media for covering it, but come on – a political opponent grabbed it to make hay, and what the media does is cover hay. Obviously the more hostile-to-Shumlin sources like WCAX are going to pick it up first. Might as well shake your fist at the storm on that one. You better believe we put up goofy pictures of Jim Douglas (of course, we don’t pretend not to have an agenda, but I digress…)

3. My favorite liberal philosopher famously lives by the progressive mantra “with great power comes great responsibility.” The people who run our state government obviously have special responsibility.

On the day the historic Health Care Reform bill is to be signed into law, this picture needlessly handed right-wing opponent Darcie Johnston of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom (by which, of course, Johnston means the freedom to die from untreated ailments in abject poverty) a way to do exactly what the sleazy right lives to do – avoid an important topic at all costs and distract the public through media outlets friendly to their agenda (and forcing the rest of the media to follow suit). At the end of the day, it’s all the right has, after all.

Slapping up a picture on Facebook that feeds into the persistent murmurs and complaints about the new Governor was an abdication of the unique responsibility of leadership. Governor Shumlin is doing a lot of good things – good things for us, as he’s all set. He’s a wealthy guy, after all. Frivolously handing opponents political weapons at inopportune times affects him insomuch it could eventually create blowback on his political ambitions, sure – but the ones it really stands to hurt are us Vermonters. We need the energy efficiency bill. We need health care reform. We need the climate change task force. We need the integrity of the water table beneath Vermont Yankee protected. These are a few of the things this administration and the Democratic legislature are doing for us.

It’s not that public officials can’t have fun – but part of the responsibility that comes with the power is, frankly, that they get to have less. And they have to be more cognizant of when and how they have fun. Shumlin needs to remember how many challenges he created for himself when he was the impulsive Senator, as compared to the remarkably disciplined Gubernatorial candidate. The latter was his path to success, and it still is.

But also problematic in the pics is Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs Alex MacLean – a talented staffer (and a powerful asset for the Governor) who will find herself taken decidedly less seriously after the release of this picture.

Permanent damage? Of course not. But the honeymoon is over. Everybody knows public figures have certain responsibilities when they’re in public, whether they like it or not. If those responsibilities are not taken seriously, it feeds the notion that the public roles they play aren’t taken seriously – which then feeds the feeling that they don’t take the public seriously. That’s just the way it is.

Come on, team. We need you. We need you to succeed. Pleeeeeeeez be more careful.

At the very least, let’s be smart about the Facebook accounts, OK?  That’s already a 21st Century cliche, after all.

16 thoughts on “Shumlin-MacLean ill-timed facepalmer

  1. “Johnston says not enough Vermonters are paying attention to the major health care changes and she upped the ante.”

    Double down on crazy!  She hasn’t paid attention to the myriad forums held statewide, all the testimony and, you know, some significant elections…

  2. Unless he was getting sloppy facetime with Alex in the shadows, I can’t get incensed about this in either the stupid gotcha sense that Darcie is or the optics sense that odum is.  Tempest, meet tea party’s pot.

  3. Holding a fund-raiser in conjunction with the Preakness!? Way to draw attention to the class difference between the high-rollers who sit awash in money regardless of the hard times suffered by the rest of us!   Something like this was bound to happen.  

    There are no “poor” governors, Democrat or Republican; and by “poor” I mean there are no governors who belong to the same working class as you or I.  

    In our great democracy, we are still ruled pretty much by rich white guys; which, no doubt, many would argue is the way the Founding Fathers would have it.  Occasionally a woman gets in there, but the essential qualifier still is M-O-N-E-Y.   You’ve gotta have some in order to raise a whole lot more.

    I don’t care what Gov. Shumlin does with his money; and it is plain stupid for the party of the Richest White Guys to be trying to use this as a wedge; but it does remind me how much I dislike the whole rigged campaign finance system which essentially disenfranchises most of the nation.

  4. If the image isn’t going to do anything positive for the governor, and there is no reason it “has” to be covered, then it is a pretty good bet that it is something you would rather not have on the front page of the paper.  Thankfully it isn’t too big of a deal, the way VFHCF used it quite frankly wasn’t as malicious as others could, and in the future they might be a little better about what images get out.

  5. I saw the picture Monday morning and I cringed. Then I thought to myself, “Why the hell are you cringing”?

    I believe my initial reaction could, in part, explain why some on the right, as well as a number of people in the press, believe this story has legs.

    My first instinct was that this photo plays into a meme that was unsuccessfuly used to discredit Governor Shumlin during his gubernatorial campaign last year. There were a lot of mumblings about Shumlin’s separation from his wife, Deborah Holway Shumlin, and the cause of their separation. There were many unsubstantiated claims made that were repeated over and over again on the message boards of the Burlington Free Press and other sites. For some, this picture suggests more than a rich Governor frivolously taking his largess out-of-state to bet on the ponies. The picture suggests it’s possible that our middle-aged Governor is entwined with two apparently younger, very attractive staffers who are just elated to be in his presence. Is he romantically linked to either? What would it mean if he were? When’s the last time we had a Governor in the state of Vermont that was single? Is Governor Shumlin single? What’s with the goofy hats anyway? But I digress. I believe that this sort of crap is an example of the basest politics of personal destruction. As such, I don’t believe it’ll have legs beyond a week, but as others have noted, while Shumlin’s record of achievements pile up, there is little else for the opposition to grasp.

    Any thoughts?

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