State of the State

Jack Van Der Slik

Jim Edgar's dilemma, or the perils of 'third way' leadership

by Jack Van Der Slik

What do you do when you're the leader, but nobody is following? Five and a half years into his governorship, Jim Edgar might well ponder that question.

Restructure education finance with income taxes rather than property taxes? Build an airport in Peotone? Create one human services department out of seven existing agencies? Expand Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center and build expensive sky boxes for the Bears? None of these ideas has gone anywhere.

As befits his personal style, Edgar goes about government problem-solving like a knowledgeable mechanic who works without philosophical blueprints.

So why can't Republican Jim Edgar parlay his own political popularity, and his party's 1994 legislative election sweep, into policy? The problem is partly one of style. Edgar illustrates the perils faced by what Stephen Skowronek, a Yale political scientist, calls "third way" political leaders.

Republican Ronald Reagan represented one leadership style. He was an iconoclast who fashioned a new orthodoxy from his belief that government was the problem, not the solution. He sought to deconstruct government and its overweening regulation. In Illinois' 1994 gubernatorial election, Democrat Dawn Clark Netsch represented a second way. She was the defender of an older government-can-do-it orthodoxy. An activist, Netsch argued for more progressive taxation to fund the state's needs, particularly in education.

Edgar hugs the middle. He is no ideologue and no visionary. He repudiates no orthodoxy, conceives no new paradigms. He is above all intellectually cautious. As befits his personal style, Edgar goes about government problem-solving like a knowledgeable mechanic who works without philosophical blueprints.

This style was suited to Edgar's first term, when the state was faced with the fiscal need to retrench. Good at saying "no" and holding down spending, Edgar did his best work while frustrating the Democratic legislative majorities during those four years. In 1991, after the new governor's first legislative session, even Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan expressed respect for Edgar's "tenaciousness." Late in that term, Edgar also revealed his grasp of bureaucratic detail. His administration marshaled state resources to respond effectively to the extraordinary flood damage on the state's western side. The governor's office worked with the departments in a blend of planning, organization and coordination to assuage human, financial, physical and political needs across that stricken region of the state.

And Edgar proved himself a master of political strategy throughout his re-election campaign. He skillfully met the candidacy of Dawn Clark Netsch, who in her primary victory projected the image of a "straight shooter." By September Edgar had morphed her persona into a tax-and-spend liberal who is soft on crime. She would shrink from capital punishment; he would build prisons and shorten the appeals process while holding the line on spending. He won by nearly a 2-1 margin.

Despite such successes, the weaknesses in Edgar's leadership style have become more apparent during the second term, when his own party controls the legislature.

Working without fixed principles, third-way executives like to poach on the territory of their opponents. That can work when control of the government is split between two parties and bipartisan deals are the currency of exchange. President Bill Clinton has played the third way with great political success since Republicans took control of Congress. He won the budget showdown for the 1996 fiscal year, found a way to fund an anti-missile defense system and prevailed on a minimum wage increase.

Illinois' suburban Republican legislative leadership wants a business agenda with a seasoning of social conservativism. But Edgar, despite a larger platform to promote his centrist agenda, remains handicapped in policy negotiations because he has little talent for advocacy.

His public appearances are wooden. State of the state and budget speeches, meant to communicate an agenda, are rhetorically banal. Additionally, the pressroom is not his natural habitat. His news conferences are never knockouts. When caught in the halls by the youthful press corps, Edgar is defensive. His answers are peppered with caveats, stipulations and conditional

limits. He uses more words to say what he does not mean than to express what he wants or intends to achieve. At political events, he dutifully works the crowd, but with ritualistic discipline, not engaging elan. A Washington reporter likened his low-key style to George Bush "without charisma."

When playing the insiders game, Edgar bargains better defensively than offensively. His tight-knuckled negotiating sessions are no fun for anybody, including himself. In casual moments he acknowledges the burden of stress and his wife's concern about his health. Former Gov. Jim Thompson, in contrast, liked to make such sessions a rollicking good time for all.

Without the ability to communicate a message or attract consensus, but wanting a legacy, Edgar's governance thus far has amounted to a timid mix of pilot projects, task forces and trial balloons. The governor has given us a committee to study long-term care for the elderly, a task force on schools and a commission on gangs. The charter schools experiment is for 45 schools out of more than 2,500. The solution to governance, he says, is "better government, not bigger government." But as Walter Mondale once asked, "Where's the beef?"

In fact, Edgar isn't particularly engaged by social issues. He isn't pro-life, but neither is he assertively pro-choice. He isn't pro-gambling, but he isn't strongly anti-gambling. He isn't passionate about ethics or drawn to debates over civil liberties.

These weaknesses in Edgar's leadership qualities were highlighted in his attempt to restructure social services. A modest approach to solving some problems in the state's delivery system, the idea was conceived within the administration without much consideration for, or conversation with, stakeholders or legislative leaders.

The governor announced in his January State of the State address his plan to put seven departments into one massive 28,000-employee agency. He has sturdy constitutional initiative here. He can mandate the changes by executive order, but the legislature has 60 days to reject them. Instead of choosing to promote a "leaner, meaner" Reaganesque rationale for the changes, then stump the state with a backup chorus of department directors, the proposal sat in limbo until the April 1 introduction deadline. By the time the written version got to the legislature, the interest groups had gotten to the legislators, so Senate President James "Pate" Philip chopped it down to a mild revision a year from now with "more study."

Operationally the plan could have accomplished human service delivery improvements, but Edgar failed at the politics of public advocacy.

In fact, Philip and House Speaker Lee Daniels have dominated the legislative agenda this year, not the governor. Going into the 1996 election they did not want their members to be at risk for potential tax increases that would bite back at the polls. That's why Philip fought off a social services restructuring that would signify Republican acceptance of the need to solve social problems with big government and big spending.

And that's why Daniels responded to Edgar's education initiative by proposing to cut the governor's social service budget. Edgar called for a constitutional amendment to increase state support for schools. But his proposal to let voters reorder education finance was forced off the agenda.

Perhaps the last governor ever to be elected from the southern half of the state, Edgar's effort to produce a statewide solution to the perennially regional issue of education funding was an extraordinary risk-taking venture. State support of schools is too modest overall, and spending is inequitable. Both problems can only be addressed by increasing the burden of taxation where property and income wealth are concentrated — the suburban ring around Chicago and the downstate cities, where most of the Republican votes are. But to go where the money is means biting the hands that feed Republican officeholders.

The plan was bold. Yet in the end, Edgar, who apparently had given little consideration to the political needs of his party's legislative leadership, let the proposal go down without a fight.

If Edgar intends for education finance reform to be his final legacy, then he will need to frame a moderate proposal and sell it to the people. With legislative partisans deeply divided, Edgar will need to rally the grass roots and move legislators by rousing their constituents.

Perhaps that is mission impossible for a taciturn governor whose core values seem so vague that he is known simply for holding the line, rather than launching initiatives that would require tax hikes.

Yet the ultimate success of third-way leadership rests in achieving concensus, on drawing the margins to the center. Indeed, whatever the style, the success of a political executive rests in his ability to exercise leadership.

Jack Van Der Slik is a political scientist and director of the Legislative Studies Center at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His most recent book is One for All and All for Illinois: Representing the Land of Lincoln in Congress.

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