Sagacity and impolitic politics

On this last day of a year better than some, let us avail ourselves of the popular cliché, the best-and-worst format, to recall 2013 in Arkansas politics.

Best Politician-That would be Mike Ross.

He began the year intending to get rich in the private sector after political retirement. But circumstance brought him back into the Democratic race for governor. He promptly raised $3 million. He talked one wealthy primary opponent, John Burkhalter, into sliding down to a lieutenant governor’s candidacy. His fundraising strength forced another potentially formidable primary opponent, Bill Halter, into withdrawal and eerie disappearance.

Worst Politician-Here we have a three-way tie between the vaporized Halter; the impersonal extremist, Tom Cotton, who came out against farmers and poor people and student loans and disaster assistance and gave ponderous speeches in rooms he hadn’t worked; and departing U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, who ran for cover when a crazed woman crashed her car near the U.S. Capitol, and who then tweeted that the violence outside-about which he knew nothing-was all the fault of the rhetoric of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

Best Public Servant-Attorney General Dustin McDaniel instinctively took Exxon to strenuous task for its pipeline’s oozing yuck into private yards in Mayflower, then brokered a settlement of the Pulaski County desegregation case.

Worst Public Servant-How could anyone possibly win this category over the likes of Cotton, Griffin, state Sen. Jason Rapert and state Rep. Nate Bell? The only way I can imagine is to take payola in a pie.

So the winner is … resigned state Treasurer Martha Shoffner.

Best Legislator-The sly moderate Republican, Davy Carter, slipped into the House speakership by getting the 48 Democrats to vote for him.

He edges, by such wiliness, the noble policy-strong young Republican architects of the private option for Medical expansion, namely Sens. Jonathan Dismang of Beebe and David Sanders of Little Rock and Rep. John Burris of Harrison. An honorable mention must go the less-flashy bipartisan leadership in the Senate of Michael Lamoureux of Russellville, Republican president pro tem.

Worst Legislator-A close race with vigorous competition is won narrowly by the aforementioned Rapert of Conway, who emerged peerless by advancing a measure initially authorizing the state to insert a transvaginal probe into women and jailing doctors who wouldn’t do so.

Best Excuse for a Scandal-Since the pie payola has won elsewhere, the prize goes to Lt. Gov. Mark Darr’s buying gasoline at Ola and recording the expenditure as overhead for a fundraiser to retire his campaign debt of the year before.

Worst Excuse for a Scandal-Several young Republican legislators wanted to get on the roof of the state Capitol at 2 a.m.

Best Public Policy-Nothing competes with the aforementioned bipartisan cleverness of accepting federal Medicaid expansion, but insisting on using the money in our own conservatively principled way by taking people off Medicaid and buying their insurance privately with deductibles and co-payments and health savings accounts.

Worst Public Policy-State Rep. Bob Ballinger offered a little interpositional bill to have the state disobey any new federal gun restrictions, a cause he boosted by quoting Thomas Jeffferson as saying we only need the Second Amendment when they try to take it away, which, as historians can best determine, Jefferson never said.

Best Political Rhetoric-Here I rise in praise of a young Republican state representative, the aforementioned John Burris of Harrison, who championed the Medicaid private option.

In defending the proposal against conservatives’ criticism that it would use taxpayers’ money merely for an alternative means of advancing the same government purpose, Burris said that such a line of attack must mean so-called conservatives were opposed as well to charter schools and school choice.

Worst Political Rhetoric-The aforementioned Nate Bell, Republican state representative foisted on the state by dirty-trickster voters in and around Mena, went on Twitter to chortle mindlessly about wussy liberal Bostonians hiding in their homes and not having assault weapons at their personal disposal.

This lame crudeness occurred while Bostonians were under police lockdown because one of the terrorist bombers at the Boston Marathon had evaded a shootout and was at large and conceivably inclined to do damage with a suicide bomb.

Best Political Dialogue-Usually soft-spoken U.S. Sen. John Boozman went off against Texas extremist Ted Cruz for suggesting that Republicans had to support shutting down the government to prove their anti-Obamacare bona fides.

Worst Political Dialogue-Here is another tie, this one of related pronouncements.

Rapert, winning again, tweeted that to disagree with him was to disobey the Lord. Then Mark Pryor explained late in the year that he actually is the one voting God’s proxy.

Best Addition to Arkansas Political Journalism-The Sunday morning Capitol View show on KARK-TV in Little Rock.

Best Subtraction from Arkansas Political Journalism-The quiet extinction of Mark Darr’s weekly column. -

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.