A fair summary of David Ige’s eight years as Hawaii’s governor is that he didn’t promise much and didn’t deliver much.

Ige’s central pledge when he unseated fellow Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie in 2014 was that he’d “do the right thing in the right way,” with few specifics offered.

He’s nothing if not consistent; in a recent departing interview with The Associated Press, he summed up: “I worked very hard to do the right thing in the right way on behalf of the community.”

Ige passed his biggest test, the COVID-19 pandemic, in which his plodding style turned out to be something of an asset.

He was slow to make decisions on testing, shutdowns and visitor quarantines, but once he decided, he stuck to his guns and waved off constant calls to reverse course as the virus waxed and waned.

The steady hand avoided whipsawing an already stressed community and proved correct as new surges continued to tax the health care system until enough residents and visitors obtained a measure of protection through vaccination.

In the end, Ige kept Hawaii’s people among the safest in nation and tourism on as solid a footing as feasible under unprecedented circumstances.

On other issues, however, his dithering style shackled progress on pressing needs and made him the butt of jokes as his policies foundered.

He grandly announced a Hawaii 2.0 initiative to revitalize the economy and brought in a Hawaiian Electric exec to lead it, but we’ve barely heard a peep about it since and certainly no plan.

He declared he was accelerating construction of a new Aloha Stadium and would have a plan in three weeks, but none ever emerged.

Not once, but twice, he guaranteed he’d enforce access to Mauna Kea for the Thirty Meter Telescope, only to quickly back down each time in the face of protests and dump the problem on others. It cost him respect of both the protesters and the public at large.

Ige prided himself more than anything on fiscal conservatism, which in practical terms amounted to hoarding cash and leaving spending initiatives to the Legislature.

Thanks mostly to massive federal pandemic aid, he leaves office with a record $2.6 billion budget surplus. He replenished the state’s $1 billion rainy day fund and shored up the trust fund for state worker health care benefits.

He can fairly claim he’s left the state’s books in excellent order, but there’s a lost-opportunity cost in letting cash pile up instead of using it to give long-suffering residents more relief from chronic homelessness, lack of affordable housing, poor health care access and a crushing cost of living.

It’s why he leaves behind little tangible progress in actually achieving the big aspirational goals he set on affordable housing, clean energy and economic growth.

The large surplus does give Ige’s successor, the more aggressive Gov.-elect Josh Green, a running start in fulfilling his own promises to address those issues.

And in the end, leaving your successor in a good position to succeed is an accomplishment in itself.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.