After a year of mostly taking the high road and avoiding attacks on his predecessor, Gov. Neil Abercrombie suddenly can’t get enough of blaming Linda Lingle for Hawaii’s problems.
He accuses the Republican of nearly bankrupting the state and suggests his rocky first year and low popularity with voters are the result of tough decisions he made to clean up "broken glass" she left on the field.
The finger-pointing is intended to do political double duty — take the heat off Abercrombie for his stumbling start and inflict wounds on Lingle as she gears up her attempt to take a U.S. Senate seat away from the Democrats.
But this far into the game, it’s a tough sell for Abercrombie to retroactively shift responsibility elsewhere for his administration’s woes.
After a year on the job, the state of the state is his; people want to hear how he’s solving our problems, not about the last administration.
As my colleague Lee Cataluna once wrote on former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s endless carping about his predecessor Jeremy Harris, it’s like going on a date with somebody who can’t stop complaining about the ex.
Abercrombie’s low popularity is more a result of his haughty manner and questionable actions than any tough decisions he’s made. He simply hasn’t been the mature, good-listening, consensus-building governor he promised.
He’s in trouble because of issuing dubious emergency decrees without bothering to tell the affected public, waffling on an excise tax increase, dismissing seniors worried about his pension tax proposal as fronts for the insurance industry, calling the Pro Bowl "stupid," saying he’s not our pal, shouting down unhappy nurses, stripping transparency from judicial selection, rudely demanding resignations of state board and commission members, and turning over his entire top staff just 10 months into the job.
These were self-inflicted wounds that had nothing to do with cleaning up after Lingle.
As for U.S. Senate politics, Democrats should be wary of Abercrombie injecting himself into that race.
He doesn’t have much political stock to offer Democratic Senate candidates Mazie Hirono and Ed Case, and Lingle would love to see the race turn into a referendum on the nation’s least popular governor with a 30 percent approval rating.
With a new staff and a new year, Abercrombie says he’s poised to turn the negatives around, and I hope he succeeds for the sake of voters who put their trust in him.
But it’ll happen only if he correctly diagnoses where he’s gone wrong, tends to his own business and looks to the future rather than the past.
He’d do well to follow the advice a reader left for him on my blog a while back:
Hana ka hoe (Work the paddle), pa’a ka waha (close the mouth).
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
