Back in the olden days (1986) many in the national media and political experts from coast to coast were aflutter about a gubernatorial race in Nebraska.

It was, according to the political experts, the first time in the United States that two women would face off as Republican and Democratic nominees for governor.

I thought of Republican Kay Orr – who won the election – and Democrat Helen Boosalis a few weeks ago when former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and feminist author Gloria Steinem were trying to shame young women into voting for Hillary Clinton.

Orr and Boosalis were brought to mind because, happily, voters in Nebraska in 1986 merely shrugged when asked by reporters about the historic race. They let the nation know that it hardly mattered that Boosalis and Orr were female. There were much more important issues in the race.

Many of today’s younger voters are telling reporters and political experts the same thing.

Most voters have long been ahead of the political establishment when it comes to attitudes toward race and gender in politics. It is an indication of how far out of touch many political professionals are with voters.

In the case of Steinem and Albright, there also was a big dose of insulting condescension attached.

Albright told voters that there was a “special place in hell” for women who didn’t support other women.

Never mind that lots of Democratic women ardently oppose Republican women who run for office, just as Republican women oppose Democratic candidates.

What Albright meant is that she thinks there’s a special place in hell for women who refuse to toe the same political line she toes.

Steinem’s remarks were just as daffy. She claimed young women were drawn to the Democratic campaign of Bernie Sanders because that’s where they could find bright, young male progressives.

So not only does Steinem think that young women are so shallow that they use presidential campaigns to find boyfriends, but she also thinks Hillary Clinton can’t win the support of young, male progressives.

Both Steinem and Albright apologized for their gaffes, but their opinions underscore a longstanding rift in Americans’ thinking about gender politics.

Many of Clinton’s supporters tried to write off Steinem and Albright’s blunders as a generational thing – arguing that young women just don’t appreciate how good they have it.

In their minds, young women should first be grateful to female politicians – such as Hillary Clinton – who fought for policies that ensured equal rights for women. And, second, these same young women should understand there is still lots of work to be done, and Hillary Clinton, as a woman, is owed their support.

But voters in election after election have made it clear that they have a different attitude. They think being a woman in and of itself should not win anyone an election – just as being a woman shouldn’t cost anyone an election.

And the gender play fails especially hard with Clinton, whose political stature is so closely tied to the popularity of former president Bill Clinton. With all the advantages she has had running up to this campaign and during it, young Democrats can’t be blamed for declining to give her extra points for also being a woman.

In 2008, American voters surprised the world – and many of the experts – by electing Barack Obama president. A year earlier, it was an election that many said a black candidate couldn’t win.

Last summer, the political experts said Donald Trump’s popularity would burn out by fall. When it didn’t, they moved the date to early February. Now, a growing number of experts see Trump as the likely Republican nominee.

When it comes to what voters will or won’t do, political pros don’t have a great record.

In the case of Trump, they argue that voters are being swayed by emotion and simplistic sound bites, rather than by candidates’ proposed policies.

Maybe so, but manipulating voters’ anger and discontent is a tactic with a long record of success.
As a political ploy, it has always worked better than trying to shame voters into supporting a candidate because of race or gender.

 

 

The budget fixes made this past week by the Legislature didn’t really fix anything, so Kansans should prepare for at least another year of fiscal turmoil.

Legislators had to pass budget measures in an effort to round up enough “revenue” to cover expenses this year and next. But lawmakers continue to studiously ignore the basic imbalance between how much the state is spending compared to how much it’s collecting in taxes and fees.

At the same time, sagging prices for oil and farm products are expected to continue to be a drag on the Kansas economy and lead to lower tax revenue over the next year or more.

While no governor or state legislature has much power to change the markets for wheat or oil, elected officials should be expected to recognize the state’s economic condition and to act responsibly to deal with it.

That is not happening in Topeka.

Instead of developing a sensible plan, Gov. Sam Brownback and his supporters continue to borrow money, sell state assets and push off payments for pensions. Those are the kinds of moves that will raise the cost of government down the road.

That road will be rockier than necessary because state officials wasted opportunities to prepare for an economic downturn.

The Great Recession took a toll in Kansas, but that toll was not as severe as it was in many other states.

First, because most of Kansas saw no housing boom during the early part of the decade, it didn’t suffer as much as many other states when the housing market began to collapse, signaling the start of the worst national recession in more than 50 years.

Second, climbing farm prices and a solid oil industry helped the state recover its economic footing faster. Those sectors don’t do a lot for job creation, but they are oversized players when it comes to financing government through a variety of taxes, both local and state.

Rather than use the state’s relatively good situation to create a rainy day fund and stabilize revenue streams, Kansas frittered the opportunity away. No welfare queen who just won a lottery could have acted less responsibly.

So now as two of the state’s most important economic sectors suffer downturns, Kansas is in a lousy position to respond smartly.

The governor likes to claim that national and international economic forces that are beyond his control are responsible for the state’s budget troubles. Oddly, he also argues that his policies are working and that Kansas’ economy is booming with new jobs and businesses.

The numbers show he has it backwards, at least when it comes to what he can control or influence.

The state budget is within his (and the Legislature’s) control, but the overall state economy is harder to steer because of global factors.

By most objective measures – economic growth, job creation and population increases, for example – Kansas has fallen short of its neighbors and national averages. Yes you can pick a quarter or a category and shine up the numbers, but annual figures and trends over the past five years show the state’s economy has underperformed national averages.

That lack of vigor, however, is far from a recession.

The current economic situation doesn’t explain why the state couldn’t hire enough workers to do the necessary jobs at state prisons and hospitals, or why it can’t seem to fund schools in a legally defensible way.

It also doesn’t explain why the state couldn’t pay its bills without borrowing money when oil and farm prices were at near historic highs.

What explains those situations are income tax cuts – and for many, tax elimination – championed by Brownback and his supporters. The cuts kicked the revenue-expense equation way out of balance.

The problems with the state’s finances aren’t a result of the state’s economy; they are a product of poor state governance.

More transfers, debt and delays will not fix a structurally unsound budget. They just end up costing millions more – and they ensure that legislators will be back looking for more gimmicks soon.

The state of Kansas has chronic trouble retaining employees in law enforcement and health care. It’s a situation that requires an immediate response and a long-term change in attitude.

Stories about shortages of prison guards, highway patrol officers and staff in hospitals that care for those with mental illness have grown common. In some cases, the issues date back years.

When pressed, Gov. Sam Brownback indicates that Kansas’ strong economy is why the state has such problems hiring and keeping good employees. The governor theorizes that workers are being enticed into the private sector by higher wages and better opportunities.

But the numbers don’t support that argument. The growth in total jobs in the state is dismally low compared to national averages. And Kansas continues to struggle to keep skilled workers in the state and in the work force.

Even if Brownback were right, however, the problem would remain unaddressed. Explaining a problem isn’t the same as solving it.

In the case of the state’s hospitals in Osawatomie and Larned, for example, more staff need to be hired, and salaries and benefits must be adjusted to ensure better retention.

State lawmakers have proposed adding up to $3 million more for the hospitals, but the additional money may not be enough – especially if Kansas is not successful in appealing the federal decision to decertify the Osawatomie hospital.

The December decertification means a loss of up to $1 million a month in Medicare payments for the northeastern Kansas facility. Decertification should have prompted state leaders to act quickly and effectively to restore federal funding and address substandard conditions.

The governor’s initial response, however, was to suggest that federal standards of care were too high and that the state might skip trying to win back certification. Few supported the idea, and the administration eventually indicated it would appeal the decertification.

As the administration was looking for cheaper alternatives to care for those with mental illness at Osawatomie, news reports suggested similar issues were looming to the west in Larned.

Workers at that hospital reported serious staff shortages that put both patients and employees at risk. The administration indicated it was studying the issue.

Staff shortages also present risks at the state’s prisons.

The situation was acknowledged by the governor, but not addressed in his proposed budget. Some lawmakers support efforts to add money to the budget to give prison guards a raise. Others want to shift funds.

For example, Rep. John Rubin, a Shawnee Republican, proposed that the state take money from schools to help boost the pay for prison guards. Talk about myopic.

With so little leadership coming from the governor’s office, in some cases the chiefs of state agencies have taken the initiative. The head of the Highway Patrol, for example, proposed raising vehicle fees to raise the money needed to hire more troopers.

The agency is about 100 troopers short of being fully staffed, and the shortages are most critical in western Kansas.

Using hikes in vehicle fees to fund more positions seems reasonable. But there’s no assurance that higher fees would be used to put more troopers on Kansas roads. Some want to see that money go to a law-enforcement training center near Hutchinson. It’s also possible that any and all available money would be swept into the general fund to help cover the state’s huge budget gap.

That’s become state government’s modus operandi in recent years. Unwilling to develop and execute a budget that is balanced, Kansas has borrowed, delayed and transferred funds to cover its shortfalls.

State leaders brag that they are trying to hold the line on spending.

State workers are left overworked and uncertain of what will come next, as many state officials act to further reduce their numbers, as well as their pensions and benefits.

Kansas has a choice when it comes to its workforce. It can try to get by on the cheap, or it can develop plans and an attitude that fairly value state workers and the jobs they do.

The last couple of years should have made clear that the cheapest course isn’t always the best, or even the most economical in the long run.

That’s especially true when it comes to health care and law enforcement.

At the University of Mississippi, officials have decided to stop displaying the state flag because it includes a Confederate flag.

At Princeton, university officials have promised to consider a demand from protesters ­­to erase Woodrow Wilson’s name from schools and buildings because the former U.S. and university president was a racist.

Across the country, calls to take down statues, retract honors and put U.S. history into a new context are stirring up emotions and politics.

In New Orleans, for example, officials plan to remove statues of Confederate leaders, but many Louisiana residents want to preserve not only those statues, but also a monument to what was known as the Battle of Liberty Place. The battle was an 1874 coup attempt by white supremacists to overthrow the integrated, Reconstructionist government put in place following the Civil War.

That our American ancestors would have erected such monuments and honored thugs and racists should not surprise us.

Any history buff understands the disconnect between the sanitized heroics described in most U.S. school books and the complex dynamics at play among real people who live in the real world.

While focusing on the achievements and the commendable attributes of historic characters helps build a sense of citizenship and pride in young Americans, no one should grow up in the United States without understanding that our heroes were human – meaning they were far from perfect.

Whether protesters win their battles to remove the names and images that they find offensive at Princeton, in Mississippi and across the country is perhaps less important than whether Americans are ready to consider their forefathers and the events that shaped our country – and continue to shape them – in a more mature and measured manner.

Wilson, by every legitimate account, was a racist. As president, he worked to re-segregate the federal government following decades of progress for blacks that started during Reconstruction. Wilson was born in the South and was an impressionable child during and just after the Civil War, and his racial beliefs were considered mainstream at the time.

U.S. history books – and the Democratic Party – have chosen to mostly ignore his record on race and focus on Wilson’s other achievements, including instituting federal labor reforms and income taxes. His legislative and political agendas are viewed with reverence by many liberals today.

Wilson’s mixed legacy is not unusual. Every historic figure we honor with a statue, monument, park, street name or such was flawed. It’s part of being human – the capacity to feel fear, pettiness, jealousy, bigo­try and greed.

If as a country we are going to start retracting the honors of every figure who was less than perfect, we will soon find that we have no one to honor.

Or like the former Soviet Union, we’ll have to keep revising history so it fits whatever version the country’s leader wants to sell at the moment.

The better alternative is to accept the idea that honors should go to those who achieved great things despite their flaws – their humanness. This places into a more appropriate context both their similarity to other Americans and their efforts and achievements.

The Confederate generals whose statues and buildings are now targeted were once admired for their loyalty and courage. The flag they carried is viewed by many Southerners not as an endorsement of slavery and oppression but as a symbol of nationalistic pride.

Are the generals less courageous and loyal now? Or are their flaws, as viewed from the 21^st century, so egregious as to make them unworthy of honor?

Deciding whether the flaws are sufficient to overshadow the achievements of our fellow humans is always going to be a judgment call.

But we should take into account that social and moral values evolve. For example, the achievements of the nation’s founders should not be denigrated because the Constitution condoned slavery and denied women basic rights. But neither should the founders be considered infallible heroes; they and their work were flawed.

Our more evolved, or mature, views might require modifications to monuments – or to the plaques and explanations that are on display with them. But it would be counterproductive to attempt to erase all those parts of history we now find objectionable.