It’s an ill rain that soaks no good on at least one or two people, and while Tropical Storm Irene’s deluge brought death to a few and misery to many in Vermont, it’s been a political blessing for Gov. Peter Shumlin.
No, Shumlin is not a heartless cad taking pleasure in the sorrow of his fellow citizens. He’s just the governor of a state hit by a devastating natural disaster, which for incumbent chief executives can be a political blessing.
Or curse, if they misplay it, as some have. The most transparent misplayer of recent years was President George W. Bush, who flew over New Orleans in Air Force One shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but didn’t visit the city until several days later. Politically, Bush never fully recovered.
But there have been more recent – and closer-to-home – misplayers, and it’s reasonable to assume Shumlin was aware of what they’d done wrong.
So were they. Neither New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg nor New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came home from Southern vacations last December when a big blizzard struck their home territories. As anyone who was paying attention (and had electricity) could see last week, both men were right at home, and made sure their constituents knew it.
Shumlin did the same. He was all over the flood-ravaged areas of the state. Usually in a suit and tie, but at least once in jeans and work shirt, he was a constant presence, on his own or in the company of other state and federal officials. He surveyed the damage by helicopter. He held press conferences in his office, on farms, and in small towns where homes and businesses had been swept away by the floods. He appeared on radio call-in shows and was regularly available to reporters and their cameras.
Everywhere, his message was the same: This is bad (“the loss of homes, businesses, churches, buildings, structure and infrastructure is incomprehensible in many communities,”) but the state will recover (“we will get there. We are going to rebuild, and it will be OK.”). He was sometimes the schoolmaster, urging Vermonters to follow the directions of rescue workers and to apply for federal assistance, sometimes the comforter, assuring even the residents of isolated towns that they were not really “stranded,” because if they called 911 a helicopter could get to them.
That comment caused a bit of a backlash. When he made it on Tuesday, Vermont was still in the process of borrowing helicopters from other states. And some spots had no telephone connection.
By that night, though, the choppers had arrived and rescue workers had gotten through to every town in the state. No one seems to have died or suffered a serious medical setback because emergency services were unable to get to them.
To some extent, Shumlin was engaged in political theater. The governor is not going to repair the highways or airlift those in poor health to the clinic any more than a mayor is going to drive the snowplow.
But the theatrics here are not trivial. Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of life is just showing up.” Whatever the exact figure, a certain percentage of good governing is just showing up. People in distress want to hear and see that their leaders care about their plight and are doing all they can to alleviate it.
By most indications, Shumlin conveyed a message of both care and determination. That’s a politically profitable message for a governor to convey.
None of which means Irene has not created potential political pitfalls for the governor. As he noted, “we’ve got a really long road ahead,” and in the final analysis, the politician in charge has to do more than appear to be doing a good job. He actually has to do a good job, and continue to do it. Bush suffered after Katrina not just because he didn’t show up in time, but because the federal government botched the job.
(So did the state and local governments, but in the words of a great Louisiana politician, “da Feds got da A-bomb.” When major disaster strikes, dey also got da primary responsibility).
So far, the Shumlin administration seems to be doing quite a good job. Not perfect, of course, and no doubt some people have gripes, perhaps some valid ones. But in just a few days, connection had been restored to all towns (and the Vermont National Guard had airlifted supplies to them while they remained cut off). State officials churned out a steady stream of information and warnings about federal assistance, road closings (and re-openings) and electricity hazards. State and local law enforcement rescued scores of people from dangerous situations.
Not that Shumlin and his appointees did all this alone. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) helped. The oft-maligned utility companies got almost everybody’s power back in a timely manner. The newspapers and radio and television stations kept the citizenry up to date, occasionally at some risk to correspondents.
Everyday folks did their share, too. Neighbors brought food and medical supplies to those who needed them. Towns organized picnics to feed those who were out of food and/or power. As individuals or in small groups, people volunteered to muck out flooded living rooms and bring medicines to the sick. It was as though Vermonters decided they’d best live up to the myth about themselves as unusually community-minded, self-sufficient, generous citizens.
Right now, in short, everybody looks good, from the governor (and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who also visited much of the state, and who opted out of his annual participation in the Labor Day stock car race at Thunder Road) to the average citizen.
But it’s early, and the immediate rescue and recovery work, while not easy, is relatively simple: Get folks out of harm’s way, make the roads passable, hook up the power and get food and medicine to those who need it.
The job over the coming months – if not years – is just as hard and more complicated, meaning more can go wrong. Vermonters may be unusually public-spirited, but they are no less likely to gripe than are other Americans when work is not done soon enough or well enough to suit them. At some point, the object of those complaints could well be the governor.
At least for now, though, Peter Shumlin looks like the guy who’s in charge and who knows what he’s doing. For a governor, that’s a very good way to look.
