Miller Hudson

For the second time in less than a month, a Republican legislator has expressed their suspicion that Colorado’s leaders are actively colluding with the White House for the express purpose of embarrassing them. It’s enough to make you break out your copy of Richard Hofstader’s famous 1963 essay, The Paranoid Style of American Politics. Of course, Hofstader didn’t argue that this tendency is only a Republican problem. In fact, the propensity for paranoia has proven an equal opportunity political pathology in recent decades.

When I moved to Colorado forty years ago, it was exciting to know my kids would grow up in one of the youngest states in the nation. Throughout Colorado’s history wave after wave of youthful immigrants, first in pursuit of gold and silver, then personal health, economic opportunity, recreation or an outdoors lifestyle, have propped up our construction industry. At times, this runaway growth has resulted in a pronounced grumpiness towards newcomers. It motivated voter rejection of the 1976 Olympics, and, I suspect, the general distaste for taxes required to underwrite public infrastructure for all these new arrivals.

It will soon be two years since Channel 7’s Tony Kovaleski ambushed the Executive Director and several of Pinnacol’s Board members at the Pebble Beach resort, living the lush life of the 1% — green fees, spa treatments, luxury suites, first class airfare and gourmet meals.

Whenever politicians step into mud puddles of their own making, wags are quick to label them as “poster boys or girls” for term limits. Carl “Bev” Bledsoe, to his credit, was a poster boy for the advantages of seniority and lengthy legislative service. There simply aren’t adequate adjectives to characterize his political skills. Bev was a shrewd and wily partisan, to be sure, but he was also ready to craft a compromise when circumstances demanded. His decade as Speaker of the Colorado House earned him respect, if not exactly affection, along both sides of the aisle.

During its Extraordinary Special Session, House Republicans in the Colorado Legislature flubbed the opportunity to demonstrate that their opposition to the jack-booted thuggery of the ‘nanny’ state extends beyond the virtual persons constituted in corporations. Early in the regular session, they were swift to rush to the defense of oil and gas drillers unreasonably required to consult with landowners prior to invading the backyards of Colorado residents.

When I was elected to the Colorado Legislature in 1978, Paul Sandoval was elected to a Senate seat. He had already served several terms in the House, where he entered as its youngest member. Aside from Santa Claus, Paul is the only person I’ve known whose eyes genuinely twinkled. Coupled with an acerbic sense of humor, every conversation with him often became something of a laugh fest. Yet, as you chuckled at his barbs, you couldn’t help wondering what he was saying about you when the opportunity arose.

Last summer I wrote about the departure of Colorado Army National Guard Space Support Teams 15 & 28 for their active duty deployment to Afghanistan. Last week they returned home following nine months of barracks life in Kandahar and at Camp Leatherneck, respectively. Their welcoming ceremony was held in the Air and Space Museum at Petersen Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. The crowd was about half the size of the one that saw them off on the first of July, and was largely composed of family members.

As my stepson and I were traveling from Denver to Copper Mountain last week for our final ski day of the season, we completed the trip in just under 90 minutes. Lousy snow and good weather conspired to make our journey swift and relatively painless, much like most trips were when I-70 was constructed more than 40 years ago. Since a second tunnel bore enabled four traffic lanes beneath the Continental Divide there have been few changes to the highway.

A half-century has elapsed since a long forgotten American Public Information Officer in Viet Nam declared, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The sheer lunacy of his remark has survived, however, as the premier example of bureaucratic policy run amuck. Democratic governments, which can only be held accountable in the final analysis by voters, have proven particularly susceptible to the seductions of groupthink enthusiasms. These fevers rarely originate internally, but, rather, they tend to be transmitted as infections germinated by legislators.

I learned of Ted Strickland’s passing with genuine regret. He represented a generation of Republican leaders who still believed in the importance of government and the positive role it can and should play in all our lives. Unlike many in the current crop of Republican legislators, who would have Colorado voters believe government is our enemy — that a return to frontier anarchy would constitute a net social improvement, Ted understood that, when properly channeled, government significantly improves the quality of life in Colorado. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a conservative.