CRONYISM WON a major victory in the state Senate Judiciary Committee last week, beating back (for now) the best chance in more than a decade to make our government accountable to the people of South Carolina.
But then, in our state, it almost always works out that way.
When Alexander Hamilton asserted that “every government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation,” he was arguing that it should be so. It seems reasonable to assume that it is so, in any government that survives for any period.
That’s certainly true in South Carolina, to the nth degree. In our case, one of the primary means of defending the established order arises from one of our system’s defining characteristics: personal relationships.
For the past 300 years, in one form or another, we have had a government of men, not of laws. We have never had a system in which power is concentrated and clearly defined so that voters can easily monitor and control their government. Instead, we have had scattered, confusing, labyrinthine arrangements that are almost impossible for anyone but an insider to follow. One’s ability to get things done has depended upon whom one knows, to a markedly greater extent than elsewhere in the United States.
This was remarked upon by the FBI agent who led the investigation into corruption in the Legislature 14 years ago: “What really strikes me about South Carolina is that the people here are very networked, particularly the people in positions of authority.... Many of them know each other through educational experience, through long family associations.... It is a healthy thing, but it also leads to — I have never liked this term — a good old boy system, where you take care of me and I take care of you.”
Despite a less-than-halfhearted attempt a decade ago to restructure government to address this, placing about a third of the executive agencies under the person elected by the people to run that branch, that old-boy system (notice I didn’t say “good”) lives, and looks out for itself as strenuously as ever.
The senators on the Judiciary Committee proved that last Tuesday. Of course, they wouldn’t put it that way. They would say they were sticking up for your right to keep electing the heads of the Agriculture Department, the National Guard and other agencies separately from the governor. They would say it would show distrust in the voters to actually put the elected chief executive in charge of the executive branch.
That is absurd. Passing this legislation would not have changed the form of government; it would simply have given you the right to vote on whether you wanted to keep electing those people. They didn’t trust you enough to let you do that.
Why? Because it could mean putting some of their pals out of work. Several of the current constitutional officers have lobbied hard to keep things as they are.
The scuttling of Gov. Mark Sanford’s valiant attempt to give future governors the power to actually do their jobs was not about you and your rights. It was about preserving the old-boy network.
And we are talking boys here. What happened in that committee room was like an episode of “Friends” without the cute young women. The friends of Adjutant General Stan Spears worked together with the friends of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, Secretary of State Mark Hammond and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Sharpe to see that they get to keep dancin’ with the ones that brung ’em — their narrow constituencies that consist to an alarming extent of the folks who have the most direct interest in those offices, rather than the electorate at large.
(Oh, we can all vote on those, but how many of us do so knowledgeably? Quick, name the state’s eight constitutional officers, not counting the governor. If you can do it, you are a wonk of the first order. Now go out to a shopping mall and see how many others can do it. And yet we let these relatively unknown people run most of our government, which means most of our government can’t possibly be accountable to most of the people in our state.)
“It’s obvious what was happening,” said Judiciary Chairman Glenn McConnell. “I hold a lot of the constitutional officers responsible.... It appears that their job security is the highest priority and not the question of giving the public the choice on the management style they want.”
Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum, who actually cares more about South Carolina than herself, did not lobby for the status quo. She believes her job, which holds sway over more than half the government, should be under the governor. So the committee obliged her, and left her post as the only one that would become appointive rather than elective.
Saying they “obliged her” is giving them an awful lot of credit. It assumes that they didn’t do it because she’s the only Democrat in the bunch.
But let’s assume it. Their actions were still inexcusable. Those jobs and those agencies belong to the people of South Carolina, not to the individuals who temporarily hold them. Fair, conscientious, disinterested legislators should not care what is best for those officeholders. They should care about what’s best for us. The majority on Judiciary failed that test.
No rational person can argue that we shouldn’t be allowed to decide whether we want a logical form of government for a change. And yet they scuttled our chance to do that. Sen. McConnell said the effort won’t be revived without a public outcry.
The forces that want to keep things as they are assume that there will be no such outcry. They assume you don’t care enough about the form of your government, that you aren’t smart enough to see how the current form prevents South Carolina from moving forward.
They’re basically betting on the public not realizing what they’ve done. That’s how cronyism works — in the shadows, with lines of authority so confused that the layman, watching from the outside, finds it hard to tell what’s really going on.
Write to Mr. Warthen at P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, S.C. 29202, or bwarthen@thestate.com.
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