Where rhetoric speaks louder than actions; or, Andy Dillon wears no clothes

by: Eric B.

Sat Dec 19, 2009 at 14:26:57 PM EST

Teh Demas exchanges Mike Bishop's coy, aquamarine eyes for Andy Dillon's really good hair.

Still, if you’re a Democrat, it’s highly fashionable to scoff that Andy Dillon can’t win the race for governor.

Not just fashionable, but eminently sensible. Primary elections are not won by the person who can rack up the most "He just gives a damn" statements in Op-Ed's, but by the person who can put feet into the polling place. That requires two things ... a constituency and a ground organization (going back to my belief that Iowa and New Hampshire are ultimately not so important in the long run of the presidential nomination process because strategy and ground organization can overcome headlines any day). Unless he's been hiding a private army of organizers under a rock, Dillon has neither, since you need more than vague waves of the hand at potentially disaffected groups of people to create a constituency.

And, this gets right to the heart of the problem of a Dillon candidacy. It is long on ideas but short on execution. It's one thing to say that we need to reform government; it's another thing to actually get people to go along with you.

I give you as prime example the Dillon health care plan. This should have been a slam dunk. When he first broached this, everyone thought it was a good idea. Even both Detroit newspapers agreed that it was a reform we badly needed. Then, we watched as the energy devoted towards this was squandered in another non-ending budget squabble, and by the end of October, even Mike Bishop had publicly backed away from it, calling it an idea he was willing to look at. Everyone was opposed to it, not just the MEA, because no one trusted the competence of the leadership in Lansing ... including Andy Dillon.

This wishy-washy "is he in, or is he out" stuff does not help. Back in September, he was going to make a decision by October. Then, it was by the end of November. Now, it's into January. To regular people, this smells of Bret Favre, every year debating long into the NFL off-season whether he was going to extend his career one more season. That might be only mildly annoying if you're watching football, but it's not something that is going to make people confident that he can offer the kind of decisive leadership to execute his economic recovery plans, explained as...

In the world according to Dillon, the future of our state hinges on expanding our research and development prowess to life sciences, aerospace, defense and agriculture with an assist from our top-notch research universities. In the short-term, it means investing in education and worker retraining for those left behind in an economy obliterated by manufacturing’s implosion.

Yes, the world according to Dillon. Also, the world according to Jennifer Granholm, since if you swap out green energy for agriculture, you have the exact same economic recovery strategy articulated by her MEDC to local economic development agencies across the state. How well has it worked out? Better than you probably know, since it appears that no one is aware that this strategy exists, but very clearly we're still struggling to put people to work. This points us to the real crux of the problem. It is less important to have lots of really good ideas that sound good to Op-Ed writers and think tank people quoted by Op-Ed writers, and a lot more important to be able to execute the ideas you have. Aside from reregulating the utility market in a way that hurt average people, has Andy Dillon actually done anything to inspire confidence that a Gov. Dillon will be any more successful at implementing his big ideas than Speaker Dillon has?