She’s tall, blonde and looks you straight in the eye on meeting.
You tell her about a local shipping port issue. She asks for more
details and clearly understands the economic significance of the
issue in the greater scheme of things.
A few minutes later she’s at the podium telling her personal
story in an engaging way, then shifting to the very large
problems facing the state. In clear, crisp fashion she tells her
audience what she wants to do about them.
She is Meg Whitman and she is running for Governor of California.
Like Ronald Reagan more than four decades earlier, she is
traveling the state introducing herself to potential supporters
in cities and towns large and small.
Her audiences know the problems: a state budget that has shot up
by 80 percent over the last 10 years; painful spending cuts and
added taxes this year to get the budget temporarily balanced; a
school system with results near the bottom of the 50 states; an
overly large bureaucracy; an ineffectual legislature — for
starters.
She says, “It’s better to do three things at 100 percent than 15
things at 20 percent,” and names the three: job growth,
government spending, and education.
If you read that in a campaign brochure your reaction might be
ho-hum, but hearing it from this woman who knows her issues and
statistics gives the statement the ingredients needed: conviction
and determination.
It’s widely understood that California’s regulatory burdens and
high taxes are keeping new businesses out and driving away some
existing ones. When she says she will set out to streamline the
regulatory process “in a very aggressive way,” you believe her.
California’s government has been growing like mushrooms after the
rain. She is determined to stop and, wherever possible, reduce
that growth. She intends to review all programs with an eye
toward consolidation where that’s appropriate, and elimination if
they have outlived their usefulness.
As for education, of the state’s $70 billion annual spending,
approximately half goes to administrative and overhead costs. Her
goal is to bring that down to 20 percent, with 80 percent going
into the classroom, including merit pay for exceptional teachers.
There are entrenched constituencies for the status quo in all of
three areas of her focus. The legislature has been controlled by
the Democrats for most of the last 50 years. They still live in
the reflected glow of the steady growth of the Fifties and
Sixties (before many of them were born). Then, the answer to any
problem was, do it; we’ll find the money (in taxes, tolls,
licensing fees) and the state seemingly could always afford it.
Population was always growing; so were revenues.
No more. The public is used to having a can-do spirit, but
unwilling to pay for it. A steady dose of reality, coupled with
optimism, is what is needed. And that is exactly what Meg Whitman
communicates. Like Ronald Reagan, her demeanor is friendly and
upbeat, but determined.
She understands the complicated interrelationships of
institutions. She got her start in management consulting, with
Bain & Company, Mitt Romney’s company. Later, she moved to
eBay, then a small online auction company with 30 employees. She
piloted it to $8 billion in annual sales and 15,000 employees. It
is very pro-entrepreneur. “Today, 1.3 million people make most or
all of their living on eBay,” she says.
As one person said after her presentation, “The politicians —
mostly men — have messed things up in Sacramento for years.
Maybe it’s time to let a smart, successful businesswoman have a
crack at it.” Indeed it may be.
Like Ronald Reagan, she has clear convictions, the determination
to carry them out against a large, usually unmovable object —
state government, and the optimistic, sunny personality needed to
roll with the punches. Is she the next Reagan? Maybe so.
