Bevin a craven coward or Cleanup Crusader? | Al Cross
Kentucky’s top two politicians were a study in contrasts this week.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, after doing what he called “the single most consequential thing” in his 46 years in politics – securing a Supreme Court seat for conservatives by keeping a liberal president from filling it – drew lots of harsh criticism.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called the Senate majority leader “the man who broke America” and said, “No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.”
Such condemnations didn’t keep McConnell from taking a victory lap as the Passover-Easter congressional recess began, and it didn’t keep him from facing journalists who had questions for him. He held news conferences in Northern Kentucky on Tuesday and in Louisville on Wednesday.
Gov. Matt Bevin takes a different approach.
He hasn’t had a wide-open, general press conference since December, though he and his fellow Republican lawmakers had a landmark legislative session full of bragging points he could talk about, and his office no longer replies to inquiries from certain journalists or news outlets.
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The day after the session ended, Bevin was clearly irked by a story in this newspaper reporting that he had gotten a million-dollar bargain on a new Anchorage estate from a political contributor he had appointed to the state pension board.
The governor and his staff had refused to provide any information for the story over the previous two weeks, but he unloaded about it – and its author – in radio interviews Tuesday and Wednesday with talk-show hosts on WHAS-AM.
Afternoon-drive host Terry Meiners, who does a good job of putting issues before politicians without being confrontational, asked, “Do you still have reporters outside your home trying to determine whether you live in the home?”
Bevin replied, “They don’t even know where I live, but it’s pathetic that they consider to be important, given all of the issues in our state. There’s people like Tom Loftus who literally need to get a life. That guy is pathetic. He really is.”
Bevin added later that he was “being only slightly facetious in my scorn for what passes for the media. They really are pathetic. . . . I would think they would care about things like the drug addiction problem, and the pension crisis, and the amazing amount of bureaucracy and the corruption that is rampant, and the fact that the FBI is back again, investigating the prior administration’s road contracts; I mean, these things should concern the media, but instead they literally care about things that do not matter, and it’s a shame on them and it’s shame on Kentucky that that’s the best we have.”
Well, that’s a load. Let’s look at it. There have plenty of stories about Kentucky’s opioid epidemic and its pension crisis, and stories about the FBI probe – which at this point appears to be about collusion among contractors, not the administration of Bevin predecessor Steve Beshear, Bevin’s favorite punching bag (unless it’s his son, Attorney General Andy Beshear).
To be sure, there could have been more stories about pensions, and probably about bureaucracy and corruption. Bevin wants such stories to make him look like a Cleanup Crusader, and to prepare the public for the tax increases that will be necessary to solve the pension problem.
But the governor needs to have a little patience. We just got through a very busy legislative session, and the Frankfort press corps is less than half the size it was when I left this newspaper almost 13 years ago. One of the most valuable additions in that time has been Ronnie Ellis as a correspondent for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., but he’s one of the reporters who can’t get his calls returned, apparently because of his stories on Bevin threatening Democratic legislators early in his term.
The shriveling of newsrooms, especially those of newspapers, has reduced investigative journalism and raised the number of published errors. And the online competition for readers has sometimes compromised editors’ news judgment. News media need criticism to keep them accountable for their mistakes of omission and commission, but that criticism needs to be based on facts, not some politician’s opinionated grudges.
By not returning calls and emails from news outlets he disfavors, and by not having press conferences, where he can face detailed questions from journalists who know the issues and act as independent representatives of the public interest, the governor looks more like a craven coward than a Cleanup Crusader.
In the past week, he has been the political version of a juvenile delinquent: egging people’s homes and hiding to avoid the accountability of tough questions. His office didn’t respond to repeated inquiries for this column.
Without the occasional discipline of a press conference or a tough interview, Bevin has reverted to the loose-cannon approach he followed during much of his campaign. That’s risky. He seems to enjoy bantering with friendly interviewers, but he needs to realize that even at a press conference, he still has the bully pulpit. With the alternative media, he likes to use, press conferences are no longer journalistic filters; he can circulate whatever video clips make him look good.
Perhaps the governor senses, or has polling to show, that Kentuckians aren’t willing to pay more taxes to fund pensions, so he wants traditional news media to help him beat the drums about the problem. Certainly, if he stays on course for a special session on pensions and tax reform, more attention to both subjects is called for. And the Frankfort reporters I know will do that in spite of silly lectures and personal attacks. But if Bevin won’t subject himself to their questions, voters will begin to wonder what he’s hiding.
Al Cross, a former CJ political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and associate professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media. His opinions are his own, not UK's.
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