ANYBODY who wonders why people are turned off on politicians ought to take a look at what's been going on in Annapolis.
The current flapdoodle is two-pronged: Governor Schaefer's attempt to abolish the jobs of 1,766 state workers in a budget crunch and the General Assembly's blundering attempts to adjust the squiggles on the congressional redistricting map. The assembly's special session has been a test of wills between a hard-headed House speaker and a hammer-headed Senate Frank A.DeFilippopresident. And the trouble is, there's nobody around to bang their heads together.
Congressional redistricting is only the latest manifestation of lunacy on the loose. Maryland's financial miasma is the full-mooners' enduring contribution. The gasses emanating from both chambers are little more than a generous bequest in a pauper's will.
Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, D-Prince George's, and House Speaker Clayton Mitchell, D-Queen Anne's, are the Frick and Frack of Maryland politics. Miller sees the state through his cozy political clubhouse in Prince George's. And Mitchell views the rest of Maryland through the cornfields and crab flats on that primeval bog known as the Eastern Shore.
In the land of the bland the master of the one-liner is often king. Miller is Mr. Quote in Annapolis, the man reporters run to for a snappy bon mot. And Miller has never met at microphone he didn't like. Miller is determined to protect Democrats at any expense.
For his part, Mitchell is a stubborn Eastern Shoreman who's easily committed to preserving his native territory in virtually its natural state as if he's readying it for an archaeological dig.
Both Miller and Mitchell are behaving like political Luddites (those 18th-century followers of a madman named Ned Ludd who believed he could inhibit progress by smashing machines).
In the bad old days it used to be argued that the legislature was simply a seal of approval for the governor. Today it can be advanced with equal vehemence that the General Assembly is merely a rubber stamp for the whims of its leaders. And if this is the case, as it seems to be, it's an unnatural act.
Legislative bodies, by their very nature, are deliberative bodies, not policy-makers. The Constitution invests awesome power in the executive branch, endowing Maryland with one of the strongest executive budget systems in the country.
