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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

7/09/2002

The Power to Lead is Earned, Not Given
Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer argues in a Tennessean op-ed today that the limited power of the state's chief executive to veto legislation helped foster the drawn-out budget crisis. In Tennessee, the governor's veto is a paper tiger, taking only a simple majority to override. Greer's point: Gov. Don Sundquist could have lead the state to an income tax if he'd been able to veto non-income tax budgets and made his veto stick.

Greer says: "The veto would have likely stuck, forcing the state legislature to listen to his preferences and opinions. He would have been far more powerful and far more effective. He would have, in other words, been better able to lead. In this recent crisis, Sundquist would have been able to influence the process in significant ways."

But, um, well, perhaps Gov. Sundquist's ineffectiveness wasn't because of his rather limited veto power, but because he simply doesn't know how to be a leader. And perhaps the legislature didn't want to listen to his solution to the crisis because they know his continuous proposals for bid spending increases and new programs were in large measure responsible for creating the crisis.

After all, Gov. Ned Ray McWherter managed to get things done, and so did Gov. Lamar Alexander - and neither of them had a stronger veto than did Don.

But, then, neither Ned Ray nor Lamar! ever resorted to wholesale lying to voters, deliberately spending the state into a crisis, spinning the revenue numbers, in order to ram through a 'solution' no one wanted to a 'crisis' the governor and his administration fabricated. Perhaps the rejection of Sundquist's agenda by majority of Tennesseans - and, therefore, their elected officals, indicates our system worked well indeed.

For a better understanding of why Sundquist and his seemingly powerful allies in the legislature and the media were unable to "lead" the state to an income tax, scroll down and read Glenn Reynold's comments, and his three-year-old essay analyzing the defeat in the November 1999 special session of Gov. Sundquist's income tax.

Note to Readers: If you know John Geer, please let him know I'd be glad to publish on this site his comments on my or Glenn Reynolds' comments.