(NOT) KEEPING COOL

State Senator Terry Link (D., Vernon Hills) is running for Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois. I don’t know much about Terry Link and don’t really know if he would make a good lieutenant governor, if there is such a thing. I do know he’s been involved in Democratic politics for a long time, is Majority Whip and is Chairman of the Revenue Committee. He knows his way around Illinois politics, and probably plays a pretty good game of ball with Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Mike Madigan, and I don’t mean basketball.

This post, though, is not about Terry Link; it is about one of the commercials he is endlessly running on local news radio. And, though I haven’t heard specific ads in the exact same vein, I am reasonably confident that Mr. Link’s plans for the office, as outlined in this commercial, are not at all unique. So this is not a post to blast Terry Link, or at least not to blast Terry Link specifically; it is a post designed to blast all the candidates for lieutenant governor, unless one can demonstrate plans for the office approximately the opposite of those Mr. Link outlines in this offending ad.

In this particular manifestation of the annoyance to which radio listeners are subjected during any election season, Mr. Link complains that the lieutenant governor has nothing to do. One hears a person alternately snoring and working a crossword puzzle. (That Mr. Link actually paid someone to come up with such drivel is testimony to his unfitness for coming anywhere near the public purse, but, judging from just about every other political commercial, all candidates are displaying a similar degree of unfitness.) But Terry Link promises to do something with the lieutenant governor’s office, like assuring that all Illinois residents get (Surprise!) health care. He doesn’t mention any trendy “green” initiatives, or maybe he does; I sort of tune out after the first few seconds of idiocy in any political ad. If he doesn’t, I am sure that failure was an oversight.

We are, of course, supposed to admire Mr. Link’s work ethic and applaud his plans to have the lieutenant governor crusade for the (apparently, in Mr. Link’s mind) benighted citizens of the Land of Lincoln. I, for one, am not consoled. I don’t want politicians looking for things go do. Such activity is a prescription for danger.

I, too, am not happy paying pols to do nothing. But doing so is far less treacherous, and far less expensive, than paying them to look for things to do. One of the attributes of Calvin Coolidge that made him one of our nation’s great presidents, and certainly our most underrated, was his insistence on sleeping ten hours a night and taking a two hour nap each afternoon. He clearly wasn’t looking for things to do because he realized that the less government did the more effective, and cost efficient, it was. Would that Mr. Link, and every self-important pol running for lieutenant governor (or any office, for that matter) emulate our 30th president, one of the few men to occupy that (or any) political office who was not driven by a grossly inflated estimate of his own ability or importance.