When you think that Sarah Palin and Janet Napolitano are both governors
of Western States, for a moment it doesn't compute. Janet Napolitano was
a summa cum laude graduate of Claremont, attended University of
Virginia Law School, and was Attorney General of Arizona before becoming
Governor.
(Update: She actually was an undergrad at Santa Clara University. My bad.)
How do I know this? Because I just came home from a talk Napolitano gave
at the Ivy Council of Phoenix, at which everyone was wearing name tags
with the names of their colleges on them, and the education credentials
of both the Governor and the participants in the Q&A session that
followed were proudly announced.
Napolitano came into office to be the Education Governor, and even in an
era where she has had to cut $3 billion from the state budget in two
years and will likely have to cut further next year (we have a
Constitutional balanced budget requirement), she has tried to preserve
those priorities. She told us there's a very visible correlation between
education and per capita income, and Arizona needs both more high school
graduates AND more college graduates.
Arizona is not the only state that's in trouble. Last year, 30 states
had budget shortfalls, and the only states still doing well were those
who produce energy. After this year, she says, more states will be
having problems. Who is doing well? Wyoming, with oil and gas and 30
million sheep.
Napolitano is conversant with all the issues, and articulate about them
in the way only someone who really understands them can be. She answers
questions completely and easily. She knows stuff like how much we would
get from a bailout that includes infrastructure projects. She can apply
humor and a wry irony to what she also admits to us is a historic crisis
for the country. I know her slightly, I've heard her speak many times,
I've felt pretty good about things with her as Governor for the past six
years, and I've put my money where my mouth is.
But now I suspect she will leave. I don't have inside information, but
she sure showed us tonight that she knows a lot about what the
Department of Homeland Security does, and a lot about what it needs to
do for someone who intends to run for Senate in Arizona (which was her
logical next step before she became an early Obama supporter). It's the
third largest Federal Agency, and it is responsible for the continuum
from prevention to recovery from disaster, both natural and man-made. I
guess I hadn't thought of it that way before she explained it tonight.
She also said she imagined that the new Secretary of Homeland Security
would have as a very high priority comprehensive immigration reform.
Which says it all. Napolitano has been threading the needle among
competing agendas in Arizona on the subject of immigration for years. On
the one hand, we have a growing Latino population, with all the problems
and opportunities it represents, and on the other hand we have...Sheriff
Joe Arpaijo of the pink underwear, the volunteer posse, and the
terrifying household sweeps that separate families and destroy
communities. If immigration reform is to happen, Napolitano can, as they
say, hit the ground running on the issue.
The other thing she has been doing, she told us tonight, has been
working on the Obama transition board, which was formed -- who knew --
in August, right before the Democratic Convention. It's a fifteen member
board, of which she is the only member who's an elected official. The
purpose of the board is to set up the transition process and to
identify issues and priorities for Obama's first hundred days. After the
first meeting, it became clear that the big issue was going to be the
economy.
Napolitano reminisced that the economy had been Arizona's issue in 2002
when she first took office, but in restrospect, she said, 2002 was like
training wheels compared to today. As a member of the transition board,
she and the others received bi-weekly briefings on the numbers in the
economy, and she sardonically admitted that at every briefing the
numbers got worse, until the major priority boiled down to "how do we
get the economy moving again?" The states are waiting to see what the
Federal government will do, and the Federal government is waiting to see
what Obama will do.
Knowing everything she does, how could Napolitano refuse the call
to serve if the president invites her? And knowing how bright and common-sensical and committed she is, how could we feel bad that she will go to
Washington? They need her as much as we do.
Or maybe not. If and when she goes, Arizona gets stuck with Jan Brewer.
Just slightly better than Sarah Palin.