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Enough with the gamesmanship
By BARNIE DAY
JUNE 23, 2003
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Barnie Day was a Democratic delegate from Patrick County from his election in 1997 through the 2001 session. A former county administrator and business owner, he is now a banker.
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Imagine a basketball game where there is no offense.
Imagine the tip-off. Neither team will come to center court. Both remain in a zone defense beneath their respective goals.
The stands are full. And the crowd is into it, shouting in unison, “Dee-fense! Dee-fense! The clock starts. The ref does the toss-up. But there is nobody there to jump for it and the ball bounces, and rolls to a stop.
Still, both teams are arrayed in a defensive zone.
Oh, make no mistake. They’re alert. Eyes wide and intense, the players all shift back and forth nervously, arms up, fingers spread.
The crowd loves it.
“Dee-fense! Dee-fense!” The roar is incessant and thunderous.
The first quarter ticks down. The defensive zones tighten. Then the second. And it is halftime. And high-fives all around.
The score is zip-zip and everybody loves it. They’re not losing!
Such is the sorry state of tax reform debate in Virginia. Such is the sorry rationale that is driving it.
At one end of the court, Governor Mark Warner and his small, but cagey, band of House and Senate Democrats shift warily. At the other, Speaker of the House Bill Howell cautions his Republican majority.
(They’re not reigning defensive champions by accident, he tells them. You don’t play defense for a 150 years and not learn a little something about the game.)
Despite their readiness, despite the shifts, despite the intensity with which they are made, there is a fundamental difference between these two teams.
Warner has no bench. It is empty. It takes all of his folks just to floor a team. Howell, on the other hand, has All-Americans who can’t even find a place to sit. They mill about, un-sweated, reading paperbacks and sipping the Gatorade, knowing the nod will never come.
Morgan Griffith comes to mind. Morgan, the Republican Majority Leader. Morgan The Magnificent. Morgan The Missing. Has he vanished? Has he been kidnapped? Is there an Amber Alert for Morgan? Is his picture on the cartons of milk?
(Hey, big guy, the title is ‘Leader’, not Republican Majority Follower. Shall we issue an APB for you?)
The ball lies untouched. A pity it is. Tax reform is THE ISSUE. We all know it. All the blue-ribbon commissions have said so. It has been studied to death.
What we have now no longer works. It doesn’t fit anymore. Not even close. How do we meet our needs with a Victorian model that wears pork-chop sideburns, and striped breeches, and a monocle, and patent leather shoes? How do we do that?
Speaker Howell apparently has no clue — other than to try to bait the governor into a first move. But you have to remember that in Virginia the react gene is part of the Republican DNA. It is all they know.(Which is why, with substantial majorities in the House and the Senate, Howell says it will take the governor’s ‘leadership’ to deal with THE ISSUE? It’s bait, folks. Nothing more.)
Enough with the gamesmanship, Mr. Speaker. Resist the urge to believe your own press releases. How ‘bout breaking open a little vacuum-sealed pouch of leadership?
Governor Warner raised a $1 million the other night in Northern Virginia, and in the process asked, rhetorically, a million-dollar question, according to the Washington Post’s Robert Melton: “How do you take a tax code that was built for a Virginia that relied upon manufacturing and agriculture and make it truly fair, and make it reflect the basic infrastructure needs to make our commonwealth that commonwealth of opportunity?”
The first move on that one is easy. You pick the ball up. You pick it up and take it to them.
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Copyright 2003