Like father, like son? Um, maybe not.
In the 1980s, when Gov. John H. Sununu reigned in Concord, his state education commissioner was Robert Brunelle, a Granite State native and World War II veteran with a doctorate in education from Boston University, a man who devoted his life to educating young people. The commissioner brought impeccable credentials and years of training to the job.
Public education thrived under his direction, with the state’s outstanding SAT scores singled out for attention from the New York Times.
By contrast, Sununu the Younger – Chris, our newest governor – eschewed his father’s example and instead appointed as his education commissioner one Frank Edelblut, a newcomer to New Hampshire who made a bundle as an accountant, auditor and investor before moving here and plunging into Republican politics.
He ran successfully for the Legislature and, after one term, entered the GOP primary for governor, which he lost – narrowly – to Sununu.
His experience in education policy? None. Unless home schooling (with his wife) his seven children counts. And exhibiting, it seems, a fondness for theories and nostrums popular on the far-right wing of the Republican Party as well as a profound contempt for public schools.
Which is interesting when you consider that historically well in excess of 90 percent of New Hampshire children have attended and will continue to attend public K-12 schools.
Not that Sununu 2.0 seems to have any use for public schools either. He didn’t mince words as he declared in the first GOP gubernatorial debate that he would “gut the Board of Education . . . gut all of them.” Which, by the way, is just what he’s doing.
Lack of knowledge doesn’t daunt Edelblut. Days into his new job, he asked for legislation – submitted by a compliant Sen. John Reagan, who described it as a “housekeeping” measure and admitted he really didn’t know much about it – that would significantly strengthen the commissioner’s control over all aspects of the education department. People in the know speak darkly of an unprecedented “power grab.”
Edelblut isn’t Sununu’s only odd – which is to say unqualified – choice. He decided that Franklin Mayor Ken Merrifield, a GOP activist and administrator in the state’s health department, would make a dandy commissioner of labor.
Merrifield is widely acknowledged to be a nice guy. But his grasp of labor law, labor issues? Minimal, although he helpfully cited his upbringing as “a son of middle-class workers.” Plus, he’s an advocate of so-called right-to-work, anathema to labor unions.
No problem, said Sununu, and a majority of the Republican-dominated Executive Council agreed.
But it was Sununu’s out-of-nowhere appointee to lead the Department of Environmental Services – the department in charge of monitoring water pollution, air quality and waste – that really made folks snap to attention. He chose one Peter Kujawski, a retired Army colonel and former Sig Sauer executive from Bedford with essentially no experience in environmental issues who at his Executive Council hearing cited his time as an Eagle Scout as a qualification for the post.
He drew further attention when he explained at his hearing that Sununu had initially not only offered him his choice of departments – DES was a possibility, but so were Labor, DRED or even DCYF – but threw in the possibility that if he, Kujawski, preferred the private sector he, the governor, could offer him a job as vice president at an unnamed firm moving to the state.
Eyes and ears popped, and the governor’s aides scrambled to assure folks that Kujawski had undoubtedly misheard something Sununu said.
Given Sununu’s penchant for wild off-the-cuff remarks – remember his claim on Howie Carr’s radio show that on election day devious Democrats are “busing . . . in all over the place” phony Democratic voters? – my money’s on the likelihood that the governor misspoke, not that Kujawski misheard.
But whatever the case, within days Sununu had withdrawn the appointment.
We’re now waiting to learn the name of his proposed replacement commissioner to see if he has at least a glancing knowledge of environmental issues. Don’t count on it.
And Sununu isn’t an outlier in the GOP these days. His apparent lack of interest in his appointees’ actual qualifications is just a reflection of the attitude of the top Republican in the land, Donald Trump.
Trump’s Cabinet members and other high level appointees – dubbed by Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill “the three ‘G’ Cabinet: Goldman, generals and gazillionaires” – appear stunningly unqualified for their designated jobs, perhaps not unlike the man who appointed them all.
Remember when Trump vilified Hillary Clinton just for talking to Goldman Sachs? Now he’s recruiting their alumni by the bucketsful, whether or not they know anything about the actual jobs they’ve been recruited for.
And then there are the real head-scratchers.
To the horror of educators across America, Trump turned the Department of Education over to a woman, Betsy DeVos, whose chief qualification seems to be that she is insanely wealthy, hates public schools and gives tons of money to candidates who also hate public education.
In her Senate hearing she demonstrated a total lack of knowledge of educational laws, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides for the education of special needs children.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry is heading Energy, the department charged with the responsibility of overseeing, protecting and managing the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. The closest qualification Perry has is a degree from Texas A&M in animal science. And as a presidential candidate in 2012 he himself vowed to abolish the department!
Then there’s Ben Carson, a retired (and distinguished) pediatric neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate who was drafted to take the reins at Housing and Urban Development. Carson’s own chief adviser, Armstrong Williams, only a week before the appointment, told assorted news outlets that Carson wasn’t a good fit for any Cabinet post.
“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience; he’s never run a federal agency,” Williams told all who would listen.
Apparently Carson reconsidered and decided he was competent to oversee fair-housing laws, the development of affordable housing programs and access to mortgage insurance.
Finally, there are some appointments that are simply malicious.
There’s no other explanation for Scott Pruitt for example, who for years as the Oklahoma attorney general repeatedly sued the EPA to try to get rid of clean water and air programs that affected the oil and gas industries that rule that state. And now, as head of the EPA, he is working overtime, with help from those same extraction industries, to cripple or end countless laws and regulations that protect our water, our air and our land.
No excuse, either, for the appointment as attorney general of Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, who has spent his entire government career vehemently opposing civil rights policies. He’s already moved quickly to dismantle any number of Justice Department programs aimed at lessening racial tensions, especially those enacted in the previous eight years, and voting rights laws are undoubtedly toast.
Even the little Export-Import Bank, aimed at helping American businesses – some large but more small – compete more favorably in foreign markets, will have a new director who has spent a number of years in Congress trying to end the program altogether.
I’m genuinely baffled. I’ve spent my long life thinking that if there was one virtue the Republican Party truly treasured, it was competence. Republicans may not have been flashy or partial to radical new ideas, not given to quixotic quests (well, mostly not). They were sober and serious people of substance who believed in government, if smaller government. And believed that government should function efficiently to help the lives of its citizens.
Even Richard Nixon may ultimately have been a crook, but he was – until Watergate – a competent crook.
More recently, the two George Bushes generally picked capable and knowledgeable people for their administrations, and unsuccessful candidate Mitt Romney exuded competency if not charm.
Now the Grand Old Party gives us Donald Trump. And Chris Sununu. And we find people who want substance and quiet competence looking toward – amazingly! – the Democrats.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)