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Friday, December 28, 2007
Unlike Murphy, speaker putting House in peril
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
During a chance encounter on the day former House Speaker Tom Murphy died, current Speaker Glenn Richardson talked about the case for state assistance to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he’d once been treated following an auto accident.
Associating the need to assist Grady with an emotional personal experience is vintage Murphy. One such account was related during the week of the late speaker’s funeral. Years ago, after seeing some of the babies at Grady’s neonatal critical care unit, Murphy is said to have turned to state Rep. Eleanor Richardson of Decatur and said: “I don’t care what we have to do or how we have to do it, but we will do what it takes to make sure these babies have a chance to live. Just get me out of here so I do not have to see another one.”
The similarities in the two House speakers — the one then and the one now — are striking. Personal experience prompted both of them to see a public policy question in human terms, leading them to overcome prior opposition, while revealing a gentler side of leaders also thought to be stern and autocratic.
It infuriates many Democrats to suggest similarities, though they exist. Both men came to Atlanta as unpolished frontiersmen ill at ease with a disliked and distrusted media and unflattered by the camera’s eye. TV’s not Richardson’s medium, nor was it Murphy’s.
Like Murphy, Richardson has a temper and can be goaded into overreacting. Richardson’s critics say Murphy’s tantrums were calculated and controlled and Richardson’s aren’t. In small doses, a speaker’s wrath can be an effective management tool.
But leading the House requires far more media savvy, sophistication and political skill now than any Georgia politician needed in 1974 when Murphy came to power. The House is different. Georgia is different. And the majority party, composed of a dozen different brands of Republicans, has no history in power, nor any road maps.
Richardson tried to offer his own guide. In his earliest conversations with the House, he promised bills would be judged on four points: whether they reduce the size of government, strengthen the traditional family, lower the tax burden or increase personal responsibility. The markers were essential in corralling the Republicans into a cohesive governing party.
Fast-forward now to Speaker Richardson’s GREAT plan (Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad Valorem Tax), which will be a topic of early debate in the coming session. Whatever its value to him personally, it’s a leadership mistake for the speaker of the House to make such a strategic miscalculation.
Murphy drew lightning and frequent media opposition, but he rarely did it in a way that subjected House members to risk. He routinely performed a valuable role for his colleagues by sidetracking bills that many of them didn’t want. That tactic allows members to parse their positions as they see fit, knowing they will not have to actually vote on something.
Had a major tax revision been proposed for the upcoming session — and there’s no argument that it is needed — it should have come from House members. The chamber is amply supplied with capable Democrats and Republican on its tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, starting with Chairman Larry O’Neal of Warner Robins and former chairman Richard Royal of Camilla, a Democrat turned Republican. It also includes fiscal conservatives like Tom Graves of Ranger, Burke Day of Tybee Island, Martin Scott of Rossville.
While Murphy had flaws aplenty, I never knew him to put himself in a position of competing with the “will” of the House, or of forcing members into perilous political positions, as Richardson’s advocacy of the GREAT plan does. What’s more, it’s not clear which of his four principles it advances.
Murphy had his quirks and, frankly, did a disservice to his loyal lieutenants by hanging around too long. But there was no doubt that he reflected and personified the institution of the House. He never got ahead of it or staked out his own direction.
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