Las Vegas Sun

May 9, 2008

Finally found a word for the governor: Insensate

By Jon Ralston

Wed, Mar 26, 2008 (2:01 a.m.)

Wearing a turtleneck, reading from a prepared script and ducking out before the painful stories began, Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a powerful message Monday about how seriously he is taking one of the worst health scares in American history.

I have nearly been adjectivally exhausted trying to describe a governor and his Lack of Administration as Gibbons has led us through a cavalcade of horrific missteps culminating, quite naturally, in his abominable leadership through three real crises: the budget shortfall, the housing meltdown and now the health care tragedy.

But leave it to a longtime state employee and astute observer of the political scene to provide the perfect adjective for Gibbons.

“The guy is just insensate,” this insider observed. “You can whack him on the head and whack him on the head and whack him on the head. And he still doesn’t get it.”

It’s not just that Gibbons exudes a lack of comprehension of the problem at hand, whatever that problem may be; it’s that he seems to lack any humane feeling for those affected, be they homeowners being foreclosed upon (Crisis, what crisis?) or patients being told their lives are at risk (Hey, they found only six hepatitis cases!).

I don’t expect the governor to declare he feels people’s pain. But he could at least show that he feels something and not act as if he is a robot operating according to whoever programmed him last.

This is a time when leaders show what they can do when their constituents need reassurance, steadiness, equanimity. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, reviled at the time, became a symbol of crisis leadership after 9/11. Even Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, notwithstanding his amnesia of constitutional rights he once cloaked himself in, soothed the public when he set about peremptorily shutting down the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

But Gibbons set the leadership-under-duress bar as low as it could go, downplaying the need for more frequent inspections while comparing health inspectors to highway patrolmen. Then he went even further, saying media “buffoonery” had exacerbated the crisis and defending the clinic’s practices.

After being informed by someone on the planet Earth how, well, insensate his remarks were, Gibbons tried to deflect from his unfathomable behavior by attacking the Board of Medical Examiners and its executive director as well as an administrator with only five months on the job at the Licensure and Certification Bureau. This would be like having hypothetically speaking the World Trade Centers felled by terrorists with no ties to Iraq, and then attacking Iraq to change the subject.

And that brings us to Monday and the governor’s brief, uninspired appearance before a legislative committee.

In his absence, Gibbons has forced the Legislature to step into the breach and Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie donned the leadership mantle Monday. Yes, some lawmakers have happily and cravenly pointed fingers while many of them have been Rip Van Winkles as Swiss cheese inspections standards and inadequately funded agencies combined to enable this toxic situation.

But what Leslie did Monday as chairwoman of the health care committee was to allow the pressure cooker building since the Feb. 27 disclosure to vent. These people needed a forum to express their fury, their agony, their disbelief. The governor, emblematically, had left the building.

No one is suggesting this crisis is the governor’s fault. Nor is anyone intimating that the Medical Examiners Board should not be put under a microscope. But Gibbons, to score easy political points, is upending a regulatory system that has allowed for recusals upon advice from the attorney general, as happened here. And it is a little tough to take preaching about conflicts from a man who hired from the subprime lending industry to regulate mortgages and who placed the head of the state’s retailers association on the Pharmacy Board. Oh, yes, he’s an expert on conflicts on state boards, all right.

All of this has to be worrisome to Gibbons’ supporters. Legislators, even key Republicans, say the governor never consults them before he acts. And unless a businessperson is a de facto member of state government (there are a few), he must be horrified by Gibbons’ performance.

(Poor Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson. He waits a couple of decades to finally own a pet governor and it’s as if he has purchased the runt of the litter.)

It’s possible there is a good explanation for why the governor was dressed casually, declaimed like an automaton and left the hearing Monday without listening to his constituents’ angry and painful stories.

I am sure he had somewhere more important to be.

Discussion: 9 comments so far…

  1. By AngryPostman
    3/26/08 at 10:13 a.m.
    Suggest removal

    Apparently the biggest 'buffoon' is the clown in the governor's chair.

    Is he really this stupid or is he simply poorly informed. Does he have any advisers that are not yes-men who are running some kind of scam?

    Why do the Republicans always field mental midgets (like GW Bush and Gibbons) for the top executive positions?

    Is it easier to steal from the government coffers when fools are in charge?

  2. By AgMallard
    3/26/08 at 12:33 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    Small mind, small brain, small heart and small ideas does not equal small government.

  3. By Judy
    3/26/08 at 2:43 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    OMG Jon... There should be a photograph of Jimbo next to the definition......

    in·sen·sate (n-snst, -st)
    adj.
    1.
    a. Lacking sensation or awareness; inanimate.
    b. Unconscious.
    2. Lacking sensibility; unfeeling: "a predatory, insensate society in which innocence and decency can prove fatal" Peter S. Prescott.
    3.
    a. Lacking sense or the power to reason.
    b. Foolish; witless.

  4. By cellsworth
    3/26/08 at 4:43 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    Let us not forget how Gibbons got into office. It wasn't a coup -- he was elected. So who's to blame?

  5. By Beezie
    3/26/08 at 8:25 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    Judy,
    We can also place his pic next to the word 'himbo'- male equivalent of bimbo.

  6. By CynicalObserver
    3/27/08 at 12:45 a.m.
    Suggest removal

    "Finally found a [nickname] for the governor":

    Jimbo the Bimbo

    As in dumb as a...

    Sorry ladies. You're smarter than he is.

  7. By JohnF
    3/27/08 at 7:33 a.m.
    Suggest removal

    Cellsworth,

    Northern Nevada, the RJ editorial board, and their stooges here in Clark County, that's who.

  8. By nvkorruption
    3/27/08 at 4:49 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/27/p......

    'Puerto Rican governor charged in campaign finance probe'

    "Our democratic system cannot function when public officials act as though they are above the law," said Luis Fraticelli, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Juan Field Office. "Public officials must comply with the law, and those who do not comply will be held accountable."

    NEW YORK>>>DETROIT>>>PUERTO RICO>>>NEVADA!!!

    NEVADA OFFICIALS HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

  9. By ZeddyBear
    3/28/08 at 8:03 p.m.
    Suggest removal

    Jimbo the Bozo has to go.... He needs to visit Oz and ask the Wizard for a Heart and then while he is at it... a Brain would be nice, too...... and then a pair of ruby slippers and he can go back to ___________.... Well, the Wizard can fill in the blank......

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