Bill Straub: Having a good laugh at the ‘totality of it all,’ but there is no real joy in Bevin-ville

Way back in 1936 the Republican nominee for president, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, fell to the FDR juggernaut by more than 10 million votes, losing his home state while carrying only Maine and Vermont.

Surveying the electoral map while ensconced in his election night headquarters, Landon began to laugh as if he was watching a Marx Brothers movie.

“What are you laughing at you old fool?’’ his wife delicately asked.

“The totality of it all,’’ Alf replied.

These days it’s the good people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky who are doing the laughing at the totality of it all – in this case the totality of the buffoonery being displayed by their duly elected governor, Mad Matt Bevin.

Kentuckians are not unacquainted with blowhards occupying the first floor office in the state capitol. A.B. “Happy’’ Chandler brought new meaning to the term during his two stints and, more recently, Wallace Wilkinson proved he was no shrinking violet.

But after a mere six months in office Bevin is proving to be in a class by himself. Bulls are lining up on the sidewalk every time Mad Matt enters the local china shop, attentive, pens in hand, ready to take notes.

At this stage it’s too early to declare Bevin the nation’s worst governor. After all the competition is quite ferocious these days. The city of Flint, MI, has essentially found itself poisoned under the incompetent leadership of Gov. Rick Snyder. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback is going down, and he appears determined to take the entire state with him.

And space doesn’t allow us to explore the depravity unleashed on the great state of Maine by Gov. Paul LePage, who has done nothing during his term in office to convince anyone that he’s anything but a moron.

But Mad Matt, God bless him, is in there pitching. Just give him a few more months and have faith.

Oh, where to begin. Well, there was the time during the recently completed legislative session when he led a camera up to an empty House of Representative chambers to excoriate lawmakers for failing to convene and work on a state budget, oblivious to the fact that the House was slated to meet later that same day and that certain lawmakers were in the capitol annex going over the spending package while he bloviated.

But that seems so old hat now. Mad Matt has upped his game in recent weeks.

In late May Bevin “reorganized’’ the Kentucky Horse Park Commission at least in part to oust one particular member – Jane Beshear, wife of the governor’s predecessor, former Gov. Steve Beshear, and the mother of Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat who has questioned some of Mad Matt’s maneuvering.

Bevin and the Beshear family don’t get along, and Mad Matt has been stalking them ala Freddie Kruger. Steve Beshear has questioned some of the steps taken by his successor and Andy Beshear has sued him on several occasions. Mad Matt, who seems forever in a fit of pique, responded by calling the former governor “an embarrassment’’ on a Louisville radio program and asserting that the attorney general is questioning his motives because “it’s clearly genetic.’’

Now bouncing people off of boards, regardless of expertise, isn’t unfamiliar to Kentucky or the nation for that matter. During the early days of the New Deal FDR threatened to shut the money spigot keeping New York City afloat during the Great Depression if Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia failed to banish the master builder, Robert Moses, from the Triborough Bridge Authority board. FDR hated Moses – the feeling was mutual – reportedly because the Power Broker openly mocked the president about his disability.

Roosevelt’s motivations were clear, telling one White House guest, “Isn’t the President of the United States entitled to one personal grudge?”

Moses survived but Jane Beshear, a knowledgeable horsewoman, probably won’t. The whole situation makes Bevin look small and petulant – Moses was a powerful figure, Jane Beshear is a former governor’s wife. Going after the spouse of a political foe always leaves a bad scent.

Willy-nilly changes

But the tale doesn’t end there. Bevin has willy-nilly been making changes to other boards and commissions, reorganizing some and disposing of members with whom he disagrees on others, even though their appointments were supposed to last for a certain prescribed period. Recently he placed himself in the middle of the controversy at the University of Louisville, seeing to it that embattled U of L president James Ramsey was on his way out – the governor refused to answer repeated questions regarding whether he asked for Ramsey’s resignation – and blasted the school’s board of trustees to kingdom come, drawing criticism from students and faculty, along with drawing yet another lawsuit.

Governors can’t seem to help meddling in state university affairs – Wallace Wilkinson made appointments to the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees with the express purpose of firing David Roselle and replacing him with his Casey County crony Charlie Wethington. Roselle hot-footed it to Delaware and Wethington, predictably and unfortunately, got the job.

Governors have also sought and received the resignations of board members of Kentucky State University and Morehead State University in the past. But they didn’t dump the whole board without at least asking them politely to vacate the premises.

Then things really got a little crazy. Bevin wants to sack the current Kentucky Retirement Systems Board of Trustees, which oversees a system that faces billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. He sought to replace the chairman, Thomas K. Elliott, with a Madisonville dermatologist, William F. Smith, who was wholly unqualified for the job.

Smith, in a moment of clarity, declined the appointment and Elliott, who questioned the legality of governor’s move, sought to continue in his role, a move that didn’t make Mad Matt very happy. In a raw act of intimidation, Bevin dispatched Kentucky State Police troopers to the May pensions board meeting to threaten Elliott with arrest if he tried to participate in the panel’s business.

Elliott has filed suit to retain the post, claimed he was told by Blake Brickman, Bevin’s chief of staff, that “he was not going to be attending the meeting, he was not on the board, he was not the chair, he was not going to vote or otherwise participate in the meeting, he was not going to sit with the board and he would immediately be arrested by the state police for ‘disrupting a public meeting’ if he attempted to participate in or speak at the meeting in any way.”

That’s called overkill, governor.

Of course the big news centers on Medicaid and Bevin’s plan to basically scotch the expansion deal with the federal government by asking beneficiaries to pay more for lower quality services.

Kentucky, under Beshear, agreed to expand its Medicaid program under Obamacare with the feds picking up most of the tab for the first few years of operation. As a result, an additional 440,000 poor folks have been added to the rolls, provided them with necessary medical coverage.

Bevin never cared much for the idea and is now making demands, insisting if they aren’t met he’s shutting down the expansion, thus negatively affecting 440,000 individuals he was elected to represent.

Giving dignity?

Bevin’s plan would require recipients to pay monthly premiums and require them to perform community service tasks, undergo job training or become involved in other activities to retain coverage, all, he said, to “give them the dignity,’’ meaning, of course, poor people just don’t deserve dignity unless they acquiesce to his dictates.

The changes will have to be approved by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an outcome that doesn’t appear likely. The administration has rejected requests from other states, including Indiana, that sought to require enrollees to gain employment or actively seek work. The feds have also rejected requests for greater cost-sharing.

So, with a stroke of a pen, Bevin is looking to seriously complicate, in some ways endanger, the lives of 440,000 people.

Then this week, just as if he were plopping the cherry on top of the sundae, Bevin announced that he was revamping the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, setting up a system that essentially gives the fox free reign in the hen house.

Under Beshear, the governor made the appointments but two members of the three-person panel were culled from recommendations made by the attorney general and the state auditor, thus easing concerns about any conflict of interest. Now, under this plan, Mad Matt is free to place the three blind mice on the panel.

As the late Rep. James Mann, D-SC, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that adopted articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon once said, “The next time there may be no watchman in the night.”

All along Bevin has conducted himself with a haughty, I’m-the-smartest-man-in-the-room air, He took the opportunity last week to declare that “I have absolute authority,’’ sounding either like Secretary of State Alexander Haig after President Ronald Reagan got shot or Cartman, who is constantly reminding us, “You will respect mah authoritah.’’ The latter sounds more authentic.

Bevin appears to be a classic example of someone exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger Effect – a relatively unskilled individual displaying illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing his abilities to be much higher than they really are. The Cornell University researchers, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, attribute it to an individual’s cognitive inability to recognize his or her ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.

Mad Matt is one of those types who strives assiduously to show people he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. In his instance such expression may simply be tantamount to self-loathing.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.