By now, you may have heard about Gov. Nathan Deal’s remarks about the need to rely less on government when it comes to protecting Georgia’s children, and more on what he called “the greater family.”
“It really galls me, quite frankly, to see an able-bodied grandparent complaining about the fact that DFCS didn’t do something to protect her grandchildren,” Deal said. “And my question is, well, where were you?”
The governor made his remarks with a full understanding of their volatility. But at the risk of breaching my hull as I try to dodge the ideological icebergs, let me add some needed context.
The venue was an annual gathering of the Georgia chapter of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, one of the more engaged religious conservative groups at the state Capitol.
The meeting was largely devoted to the group’s legislative agenda, including opposition to the current medical marijuana bill and an anti-bullying bill that defines intimidation, in part, as conduct based on the victim’s “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.”
Two lawmakers, state Rep. Sam Teasley, R-Marietta, and state Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, were brought to the front as heroes for their sponsorship of “religious liberty” legislation that, we’re assured, has nothing whatsoever to do with allowing Christian-owned businesses to reject commerce associated with gay marriage.
The governor was the final act of the afternoon, and in a 28-minute speech, managed to ignore each of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s priorities. Deal spoke of his efforts at criminal justice reform and keeping non-violent offenders out of prison – the better to hold families together. He spoke of his efforts to bring jobs to the region. A person with a job is less reliant on government. A job holds the family together.
The governor spoke of education reform, and the need to keep kids in school, so they could find decent jobs, and keep their families together.
You catch the drift here. We both have family-oriented priorities here, but mine are much deeper and more lasting, Deal seemed to be saying. Perhaps because he hadn’t embraced his audience’s agenda, the governor may have felt obliged, at the very end of his remarks, to toss out a large chunk of red meat.
The topic was the state Division of Family and Children’s Services, the sector of state government charged with intervening on behalf of endangered children. The underfunded agency has been the bane of governors from Roy Barnes to Sonny Perdue – and now, Deal.
The governor voiced his frustration in a way that was uncomfortably similar to the Nathan Deal we once glimpsed in a 2009, pre-gubernatorial YouTube video, speaking of “ghetto grandmothers.” He quickly apologized for that one – but not for Thursday’s remarks.
“It’s about time somebody started asking the question. I just asked the question. Y’all help me. We’re going to ask that question,” Deal said, much to his crowd’s satisfaction. “We’re going to find out why it is that government becomes the only answer to things that, historically, had been the responsibility of the greater family unit.”
The dotted lines drawn between government policy, poverty and the disintegration of the family have long been a legitimate point of discussion.
But the governor’s timing undoubtedly gave his staff heartburn.
First, the prison reform that the governor rightfully engineered, and now boasts about, is an attempt to correct a government policy that destroyed families – particularly African-American ones. His education reform effort, just getting underway, will be judged by how well it strengthens Georgia families.
But more important, the governor this week will roll out legislation – a proposed constitutional amendment – that would allow state government to intervene in the operation of failing Georgia schools.
A failed school is little more than a failed family writ large. More than a lack of money or dearth of housing, poverty is a ripping apart of the bonds that hold a community together. And the governor will tell lawmakers that, to save these larger families, government is morally obliged to expand its reach and perform the rescue.
The problem with the governor’s remarks before the Faith and Freedom Coalition isn’t that they pose a contradiction to his school rescue effort. It’s that they are woefully incomplete.
Asking the question of why our world lacks for able-bodied grandmothers – and grandfathers, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters – is only stating the obvious. We know that, in many communities, white and black, relatives are in short supply. And when the family tree is bulldozed, children suffer as a result.
The real question is, what can a governor do to lure the greater family back into the circle and repair the damage? It is the key policy dilemma behind his school-rescue initiative, and it won’t be enough to simply pose the question. If he wants support from skeptical lawmakers, he’ll have to answer it, too.
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