Only empowered executive can lead state proactively

ONE OF THE STANDARD arguments against a proposal to reorganize state agencies and let the governor appoint agency directors is that voters aren’t marching in the streets demanding this change. Therefore, the argument goes, it must not be important.

It’s no surprise that legislators would make such an argument. It is a reflection of the way legislators view their jobs — and one of the major reasons we need to give the governor the power to run the executive branch of government.

Legislatures (and ours more than most) are by their nature reactive bodies. The public identifies a problem, or a desire. The Legislature comes up with a plan to address that problem, or to satisfy the public desire.

Legislatures do not go out on their own and identify problems and lead the public to understand the need for action. Legislatures often balk at the very idea, as many S.C. legislators are doing with Gov. Mark Sanford’s proposal to modernize our government. Consider Sen. Darrell Jackson’s refrain from last week’s meeting on the legislation: “There is no public outcry. Not one person, not one constituent, has said to me, ‘We’re tired of electing these constitutional officers.’”

Perhaps it’s ironically appropriate that this has become a rallying cry of reform opponents. While our argument for empowering the governor often revolves around such ideals as accountability, efficiency and the need for voters to be able to see their desires, as expressed at the ballot box, carried out, there is something else our state needs even more desperately, and urgently: We need someone who can identify the most pressing needs of the state, anticipate the needs 20 years down the road, devise a strategy for meeting those needs and then lead the public and policy makers to implementing that strategy.

The only person who is ever going to be able to do that is someone who answers to all the people of the state, and whose job is not just to consider agriculture or education or accounting, but to look out for all the needs of the state — the governor. Just as it took presidents to sell us on the Lend-lease program to preserve freedom until the nation was prepared to fight for it and the Marshall Plan to keep freedom alive afterward, to rally the nation around Social Security and the Civil Rights Act and a host of other forward-looking proposals, it takes a governor to bring a state together around ideas that don’t appeal to people’s immediate selfish interests.

Granted, governors don’t have to have real executive power to identify problems, devise a strategy and lead the public and other officials to action. But they are far less likely to even try if they don’t have the responsibility, which only comes with real authority. And they are far more likely to succeed when they have the tools that executive power brings: the ability to tap the collective knowledge, wisdom and energy of the government to draw up a plan and to implement it.

Unfortunately, South Carolina can no longer afford to take our chances that a governor might occasionally emerge who can occasionally overcome all our built-in obstacles to proactive leadership. We have intractable problems that hold our entire state back, from poverty and low educational achievement to a declining job base and dismal health outcomes — problems that neither the Legislature nor our weak governors have been able to get any traction on. If we ever hope to pull ourselves out of this mess, we’re going to have to trust ourselves enough to empower a governor to lead us.