Meg Whitman has pulled even in polling against presumed Democratic nominee Jerry Brown, so its time to take a look at her first television ad (posted below the fold), which presumably is an honest reflection of what she is really all about. Yet even one viewing is enough to make anyone with any political sense at all realize that this woman is full of empty cliches and one very disturbing and harmful idea: cut government spending.
My prescription for Jerry Brown, anti-Meg Whitman groups, or anyone with the opportunity to ask her some candid questions is to use her own stated goal in her very first ad and ask her, "What kind of insane nonsense are you talking about?
This is the content of her ad, broken down with my analysis:
MEG: "I will say the number one thing I think that faces California right now is actually a crisis of confidence...
Is that so, Meg? That's number one? Not home forclosures? Not insane health care costs? Not global warming? Didn't the last governor, a Republican, say that global warming was the state's number one crisis now and for the forseeable future?
... People are scared to death that California cannot be fixed...
What people? Was this a survey you commissioned? I don't know anybody who says that. Where did you find these people?
... The most important thing that the next governor of California has to do is actually deliver the goods...
That's a concrete idea for you!
... The professional politicians have been fighting in Sacramento for years and the state is in the worst shape that I've seen in the thirty years that I have lived in California...
Aside from being a lie about living here for 30 years (Meg was absent from 1992 to 1998), isn't the fighting all about the democratic process? Isn't that what my elected official is supposed to do; fight for what's right? And is "fighting" the cause of the current state of the state? Not a global economic meltdown caused by national and state Republican financial policies?
... We can turn California around. I think, actually, I can make a difference. I have run large organizations, I know how to create jobs, I know how to focus, I know how to balance a budget and I think a business perspective is a bit of what California needs right now...
Face it, Meg: Ebay was a no-brainer. Your business experience is doodly.
... The things that I think we need to focus on are first, creating and keeping jobs in California...
Great! That's very easy to say. How are you going to do it? Will you announce your support for Obama's jobs bill?
... Second is cutting government spending...
What? Wait a minute... WHAT?!?!?!? Cutting government spending??? Are you INSANE???? More on this later, as it deserves a thorough fleshing out.
... and third is fixing our education system...
Another great idea. Do you intend to do that by increasing class size and depriving the schools of the money owed to them, i.e: the usual Republican "fixes"? Will you fix schools by destroying them? What's your plan for this, Meg?
... We need to have California be what it once was and I think we can do it. Let's say what we mean, mean what we say and let's get it done.
Blah blah blah, meaningless fluff, blah blah blah.
So lets focus on that quickly mentioned third-to-last part: Cutting government spending.
Just what spending do you intend to cut, Meg? Cut money to the schools, which are already running on fumes? Cut money to the police departments in all the counties? Cut money to social services and put even more low income people at risk for homelessness, poor health and other miseries? Cut environmental programs?
Please do tell, Meg. Where in this state government, exactly, do you see the need to cut spending? Please be specific because those who you plan to cut off deserve to know they you have them in your sights.
That statement alone should be enough ammunition to wipe out her lead and reveal Meg Whitman's true allegiances. She must be forced to answer the question of where she intends to cut spending, with no weaseling out. Put her on the spot with this, Jerry, and you can't loose. Californians, after years of cuts to all services, are sick of that mantra.
Whitman, like Fiorina, is a simple-minded Republican hack with no original ideas, whose only goal is to destroy the benefits to society provided by a state government taking an active, positive role in solving problems that can be solved no other way. She's Grover Norquist in lipstick, and she should be exposed as such.