Michael Swickard
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.” – John Wayne’s grave inscription
The recent elections say Americans want new eyes on the problems old leaders got us into. Albert Einstein wrote, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
In Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lost her post to the Republicans. In New Mexico, eight Republicans won seats previously held by Democrats. The New Mexico House is still in Democrat hands but only by three representatives. If several Democrats join all of the Republicans, the coalition will control the leadership of the House.
Many New Mexico politicians seem to think the same people who got our state into trouble ought to remain in power. I am not one of those people. Others think a change in leadership is appropriate. At the New Mexico Democrat caucus the leadership of the House was not changed despite a challenge to Speaker Ben Luján by Representative Joe Cervantes.
In 2008, voters voted for change, and they voted for a different change this election. There are as many theories why people voted as they did as the number of people voting, but a central theme is that new eyes are needed. It was on Luján’s watch that the problems our state is facing developed. The attempt to change speakers of the House failed when Democrats closed ranks to retain Luján.
But the joker in the deck is that the Republicans have enough votes, if they all vote together and are joined by only three Democrats, to effect a change. No one is talking right now because it is bad luck to signal what each is going to do ahead of time and give the opposition time to counter. I suspect a change will happen, and it will happen suddenly.
The Republicans in the House have not indicated any willingness to replace Luján with Cervantes or someone else, and we will not know until the House members come together next month and vote for the speaker position. Still, it gives me hope that the same leaders who got us into our problems will not continue leading us away from good and sustainable solutions.
A good place to start
Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is possible that the next New Mexico Legislature will make lots of mistakes, but hopefully, they will not be the same ones as got us into our financial crisis. Or, maybe that leadership could help the state get out of the problems. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Hopefully, the mantra that government in New Mexico can spend New Mexico into prosperity is finally discarded and replaced by the notion that the engine of prosperity is in the private sector. It would seem that to rescue the New Mexico budget there are three plans with some connection between them; first, raise taxes to get more money from the people; second, cut spending by a set percentage; or, third, get the state’s economy going so that much more money comes in and the first and second option are not required.
How do leaders get the engine of prosperity running better? By creating a better business environment and making New Mexico much more attractive to businesses in other states or countries.
The current leadership does not believe in this idea of making our economy more robust. It seems that the prevailing notion is that taxes are just not high enough. If people sent more money to Santa Fe our state would be fine. The problem is that Bill Richardson and the current leadership showed there was no amount of money they could not spend, and more.
In the eight years of the Richardson administration, education in New Mexico did not improve significantly despite an influx of new money. Again, new eyes on the problem are needed. In all of the areas of government new eyes are needed, not just in the speaker’s position – but that is a good place to start.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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