With another special legislative session now on tap, we get a last or next-to-last look at Gov. Mike Beebe's transactional leadership.
It is the kind of leadership that fixes problems rather than changes systems, which would be transformational leadership.
Winthrop Rockefeller--transformational. Ronald Reagan--transformational.
Bill Clinton--transactional, both in Little Rock and Washington. He tried to be transformational at the start as governor, but got beat.
Barack Obama--transformational, I think, with the health-insurance law and gay-rights advancements. Mark Pryor--transactional. He says let's get this government back open. Tom Cotton--would-be transformational. He says let's take our bitter medicine now.
FDR--transactional and transformational. He transacted his way through the Great Depression and war and, in the process, effected transformation. But that was an extraordinary dual circumstance, of course.
Conventional thinking is that transactional leadership best works when there are no big crises or compelling issues.
But Beebe is the transactional leader to beat all transactional leaders. Transformation has occurred around him--not despite him, but simply apart from him. It has occurred, in a way, by his leave.
Examples: Gay-rights advancement and Bill Halter's forging of a state lottery for college scholarships.
Beebe's press aide, Matt DeCample, told The Associated Press the other day: "There are two types of legacies: what you wanted to do and what you did with things that came up."
My reading is that Beebe didn't set out in 2007 to do much more than deal with what came up. His vision was to stay on the lookout for the next speed bump.
He transacted a three-fourths legislative majority to raise severance taxes on natural gas to repair road damage from shale fracking. He transacted a three-fourths legislative majority to raise cigarette taxes to create an emergency trauma system--an initiative coming not from him, but the Legislature.
He kept budgets balanced and services intact through the economic meltdown. He let a few decisive Republicans talk themselves into expanding Medicaid their own way with conservative principles and a private option.
Indeed, there has been a seeming passivity to his transactional style. It was evident again in these preparations for the special session that he has called for Monday.
One issue is that the state's teacher health-insurance system doesn't work. Rather than reform or overhaul it, Beebe let a legislative task force come up with narrow immediate fixes. Then he told legislators he'd call them into special session to enact those fixes only if they swore to him ahead of time that they--not he--had secured the votes to pass them.
The other issue is that we need more state prison beds to relieve county jails. As always, Beebe found a few million dollars under a state government sofa cushion. Again, he demanded a blood-oath legislative assurance of passage.
When it turned out that a few leading legislators didn't want to consider a third bill to keep the state lottery from running a Keno game--although there was seeming majority support--Beebe left the item off the agenda for the special session.
That's despite the fact that he has said he personally opposes the idea of adding Keno to the array of lottery features.
But he's not trying to change the world. He's trying to get over this speed bump.
Transformational leadership, or at least a credible stab at it, is risky and difficult. Beebe has learned that from his two semi-transformational undertakings.
One has been to pay medical providers differently under Medicaid. It's an initiative dwarfed by the emergence of the private option.
The other has been to change our prison-sentencing guidelines to free beds for hardened criminals and get control of skyrocketing prison spending. Widespread parole abuse dwarfed that. So we have restored our focus to the transaction of spending more money to open more jail space.
Finally: Back at the beginning, I referred to next week's special session as possibly Beebe's next-to-last example of transactional leadership.
It's conceivable he could call another special session before leaving office. It would be to pass a bill allowing rural school districts to get broadband Internet services not from private providers, but by tapping into an existing public network already serving colleges and hospitals.
But that will be a fight. There are powerful lobbyists on the other side. Beebe says the issue is "not yet ripe."
That means there is a transaction to negotiate before we see any visible evidence of leadership.
I'm not criticizing. I'm just explaining.
As I wrote in an online-only column a few days ago, government that works efficiently in its narrow essence, and leaves major change to other free-flowing forces, qualifies these days as a rare and glorious feat--a national prototype, in fact.
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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.
Editorial on 06/26/2014