Professor says Lamont is an active-positive

By Scott Benjamin

FAIRFIELD – The author of a book analyzing Connecticut’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign and a stagnant state economy, says Gov. Ned Lamont has achieved the highest grade possible on the Barber Test but needs to improve to pass the Neustadt Exam.

Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose said Lamont, a Democrat from Greenwich, fits the active-positive typology that was outlined in James David Barber’s esteemed 1972 book “The Presidential Character.”

Rose’s 13^th book, “Connecticut In Crisis” (Academica Press, 281 Pages), covers Lamont’s 45,000-vote victory over Republican Bob Stefanowski of Madison and a state economy that is burdened by unfunded pension obligations and excessive taxation.

Ironically, although Barber spent the bulk of his career teaching Political Science at Duke, he previously taught at Yale where he was the faculty advisor for Lamont’s 2006 campaign rival, former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose senior project became a book on legendary Connecticut Democratic Party State Chairman John Bailey.

Barber identified four typologies in presidents – active-positive, adaptive; active-negative, compulsive; passive-positive, compliant; and passive-negative, withdrawn. He indicated that character was the most determining factor in a president’s success.

He stated that the most successful presidents are active-positive. He put Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush in that category.

Barber wrote that those presidents were self-confident, flexible, create opportunities for action, enjoy the exercise of power, do not take themselves too seriously, emphasize the rational mastery of their environment and use power as a means to achieve beneficial results.

But, Barber also noted that since they are usually very rational people, they sometimes have difficulty understanding the irrational dimensions of politics.

Rose said Lamont is an active-positive.

“He relishes the job,” he said in an interview. “He’s not a reluctant governor.”

“He listens,” Rose added. “He is not dismissive of people. I think he’s willing to admit when he misjudges something. He can adapt.”

Rose said that he took a class to the State Capitol last spring and rank and file Republican said that there is “an atmosphere of congeniality with Lamont” that was an improvement over their strained rapport with the governor’s immediate predecessor, Dannel Malloy (D-Essex).

However, Rose offered a different appraisal of Lamont in regards to the core principles of Harvard presidential scholar Richard Neustadt’s book, “Presidential Power.”

Neustadt underscored a government leader’s power to persuade.

“I think Lamont has fallen short on that,” said Rose, noting, in particular, the governor’s inability to get his plan for electronic highway tolls even to a vote in the General Assembly.

“He’s promoted tolls but he hasn’t been as forceful as he could be,” he said.

Four years ago a committee appointed by Malloy submitted a 30-year, $100 billion proposal to improve a crumbling state transportation infrastructure. Former Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) established a Transportation Strategy Board in 2001.

Regarding Lamont’s campaign to get toll gantries on the Schuyler Merritt Parkway and Interstates 84, 91 and 95, Rose said, “Numbers have been thrown out about the low funding in the special transportation fund. There’s been outreach, but it hasn’t been enough to move public opinion. He has not really made the case, which is the role of a good governor.”

Perhaps, Lamont’s most notable legislative accomplishments to date have been the approval of a gradual increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and a family medical leave bill.

Both were priorities of the more liberal faction of Democratic legislators.

“I thought the Progressive Caucus was going to get the best of him,” Rose said. “I think his inclination is in that direction. Ned Lamont is a liberal Democrat. I’m not sure that he is a far left Democrat.”

Rose acknowledged that he is not personally acquainted with Lamont’s top aides, but that viewing it from the outside he believes their efforts are “a work in progress” as they attempt to score higher on the Whipple Quiz.

Television documentary producer Chris Whipple wrote the 2017 book “The Gatekeepers” on the presidential chiefs of staff.

“James Baker’s managing of the White House, the press and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution,” Whipple wrote of the work of former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s first chief of staff.

Whipple stated that Baker was “the gold standard” for chiefs of staff since he would tell Reagan when he was wrong.

Rose said that he found the governor’s selection of Ryan Drajewicz as his chief of staff “unusual” since he was working for Bridgewater Associates in Westport, the largest hedge fund in the world.

Drajewicz had worked for former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-East Haddam) from 2002 to 2010.

Rose said he also found the selection of Melissa McCaw as the secretary of the state Office of Policy & Management (OPM) – the budget director - “unusual” since she was the budget director for Hartford when it received a controversial state economic rescue package in 2017 to avoid filing for bankruptcy.

McCaw had formerly worked at OPM for seven years and also spent seven years as the budget director for the University of Hartford.

Rose said that so far his concern is that the staff is “not bringing Ned Lamont’s policies into the minds of the people of the state of Connecticut.”

But Rose noted that the governor made changes this summer.

Former West Hartford mayor and former state Sen. Jonathan Harris is now a senior advisor. He has been working as the undersecretary for comprehensive planning at OPM.

Brookfield Patch reported that state Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) Brookfield said Harris’ interaction with legislators in the closing weeks of the General Assembly session this spring, when he was dispatched to the State Capitol, “made a difference” as bills were being considered.

Max Reiss, who had been the political reporter at WVIT NBC Connecticut 30, was appointed as Lamont’s communications director in July.

Some observers have said that Malloy received some favorable feedback during his early months in office, even from critics, for holding hour-long forums in 17 different municipalities across the state on his shared sacrifice budget plan. It took until August, but the $1.5 billion in tax hikes, the spending reductions and state employee concessions were approved.

During a talk in Danbury in 2013, Harris, then the executive director of the state Democratic Party, said he would give “a boatload of credit” to former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) for holding a series of handshake events during her early months in office in 2004 to introduce herself to voters after being elevated from lieutenant governor after Rowland had resigned.

Those handshake tours may have been partly responsible for her achieving unprecedented approval ratings in the Quinnipiac Poll during her early years in office.

Critics have said there has been no comprehensive marketing plan for Lamont’s tolls proposal.

On a separate topic, was there a disconnection between Malloy’s poll approval ratings, which in his last year in office were the worst of any governor in the country, and his performance?

After inheriting a projected $3.7 billion budget deficit, over eight years he trimmed the full-time state work force by 13.1 percent, according to CT Hearst business columnist Dan Haar.

CT Hearst political editor Ken Dixon wrote in September of last year that, among other things, Malloy reached an agreement with state employee collective bargaining units that over the “next few years” would have 16,000 new employees in less-expensive pension plans.

Shortly after the former governor left office, CBS’ “60 Minutes” did a story on his criminal justice reforms. By the end of Malloy’s tenure the state’s prison population was the lowest it had been since 1994.

State Comptroller Kevin Lembo (D-Guilford) has told Brookfield Patch that Malloy was the first governor in a generation to put an adequate amount of money each year into the state employee pensions.

During the first Democratic presidential debate U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said that Connecticut’s murder rate had declined as a result of the gun laws that Malloy had signed.

Rose said, “There is some truth in that” there was a disconnection between his polls numbers and his accomplishments.

However, he added, “The two big tax increases [in 2011 and 2017] seem to be associated with him.”

“But I think a lot of his low approval ratings were due to his personality,” Rose said.

“He was not the most likable guy,” the professor said. “He was standoffish. He seemed arrogant. He did not have a good relationship with the press.”

Rose said he sent a copy of “Connecticut In Crisis” to Lamont and a short time later the governor left a voice-mail message thanking him for the book and that he had skimmed the chapters on the election and planned to start reading the policy section.

He said, “I don’t think Malloy would have ever done that.”