This is just what Arizona needs: Fife Symington saying he's seriously thinking about running for governor again. Yes, yes, an appeals court cleared him of bank and wire fraud. His record is clean. But you can't get rid of the smell.
"I know Fife Symington," a friend once observed. "He's a nice guy."
I snickered.
"He's a nice guy," he repeated with confident firmness.
I'm sure he is. But Arizona has enough image problems.
We are broke. We have an unfinished budget. The state is borrowing money to pay the bills and digging up cash through a sale/lease-back program of as many state buildings as possible. Standard and Poor's just lowered Arizona's credit rating. State Treasurer Dean Martin (no jokes about Jerry Lewis please, I've heard them all) told KOLD News 13 Political Specialist Bud Foster that it's getting harder to attract business and investors to Arizona because of the budget quagmire. It makes me wish we could trade in the legislature -- as Arizona Daily Star cartoonist David Fitzsimmons illustrated -- as a "Cash For Clunkers" transaction.
Need I mention the guy who carried the assault rifle outside President Obama's VFW speech simply to demonstrate he could? Legal, yes. Smart, not so much. At least you can attribute this mental lapse to a single person. The same goes for that pastor who prays for the death of President Obama, the one who also happens to be from the Phoenix area. People outside the state look at this and say, "You see a trend here?" just as we're dusting ourselves off from digging out of Evan Mecham's hole.
Just to alleviate any charge I'm ragging solely on the Valley of the Sun, Tucson has its share of dysfunction: Rio Nuevo (aka "Rio No-Hay-Vo"), homegrown budget issues, and several assorted political characters I am mercifully not identifying. On the flip side, we have this nice new underpass on 4th Avenue.
As I have lamented before, it's getting harder to find good people to run for office. The good people know better. When you see the sharks, you don't step into the water. And when you have some semblance of nobility, why risk corrupting it?
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