Mike Beebe is a hard act to follow as governor. Following a bad governor, though, would have been much harder.
Freshman Gov. Asa Hutchinson is getting good press during his first session. So far, he's not suffering in comparison to Beebe. That's quite impressive.
It takes nothing away from the new guy to point out the advantages Beebe left him. Before I do, note that supporters of gay rights aren't happy with the new governor at all. I don't blame them. There's almost nothing resulting from the last election for them to be happy about. More about that in a minute.
Everybody knows Beebe, a Democrat, was the unchallenged leader of his party. He and his party worked with the then-newly minted Republican majority. Together they solved the biggest, most widespread, vexing and partisan issue afflicting state governments today: health care. They wound up with something Hutchinson, the Republican's Republican, could swallow.
By the time Hutchinson arrived, the state Legislature had gained a large GOP majority. That majority had no serious scores to settle.
Health care overshadows everything Beebe did. The way Beebe handled everything, including health care, is what we should appreciate more. The same method that reached an agreement on health care worked on everything else. Health care was just the toughest nut.
Beebe took a legislator's approach to being governor. He built consensus by insisting on thinking all the way through an issue with lawmakers. Like any good lawyer or a state Senate leader -- he had been both -- he'd exhaust all options in meeting room debates. A debate with Beebe got somewhere. It avoided the tail-chasing and catch phrases. Good policy resulted. The same people who joined Beebe in this productive method lead the Legislature today.
Nothing's perfect. There were some talented, hard-working lawmakers who disagreed with Beebe on principle and suffered for it. Beebe knew how and when to use brute force. He just preferred to use it as leverage. Put another way, he preferred a pry bar to a hammer. He knew how and when to use that hammer, though. It was a big one. It's a scary thing for a lawmaker to oppose a governor who got more votes in that legislator's district than the lawmaker did.
Beebe left office as the most popular governor in recent history. That's because he knew better than anyone what to do in politics after the election is over. He did the work. The health care package that's so famous would never have passed without the public's appreciation and trust of a governor who did the rest of his job so well.
Hutchinson benefits more than anyone from this shop being in good running order. He's taken that momentum and steered his own way on tax relief, long-term health care reform and prisons. That may be the most impressive thing he's done so far. Few things are more powerful in politics than the tendency to keep going the same way if you want to keep moving at all.
Hutchinson has taken some grief for letting an anti-gay rights bill become law without his signature. Vetoing that bill would have destroyed Hutchison's standing with conservatives and lead to an instant, easily obtained override. That override would have let new, rival Republican leaders emerge. Hutchinson would have gone from unchallenged command of his party to wounded duck. Nobody needed another "holier than thou" competition among ambitious Republicans -- least of all supporters of gay rights.
Back on the topic of legacies, let's talk about Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee's administration had more drama than I liked, and I'm a reporter. It had more drama than Huckabee would have liked, too. But he didn't flinch after the state Supreme Court ruled the state's education system unconstitutional. It always had been. Underfunded schools were an Arkansas historical legacy and the state's most serious, seemingly insoluble problem.
Legislative leaders came up with the solution. Huckabee's plan for sweeping consolidation wasn't accepted. But Huckabee set the tone. Nobody left his speech at the opening of the legislative session after the Lake View ruling and still believed that some "just enough" tinkering with the existing system would do. Huckabee made the changes the Legislature had to be made look less drastic.
Beebe came into office right after Huckabee. The biggest challenge Beebe could have faced had already been met. Like health care for Beebe, school reform overshadows everything for Huckabee. In hindsight, though, that's two very big boulders cleared from the state's path.
A state is fortunate to get one good governor. It's early, but history may yet look kindly at three in a row.
Doug Thompson is a political reporter and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at dthompson@nwadg.com.
Commentary on 02/28/2015