Third time charmed to bury LA's liberal populism

Louisiana was at this same spot 16 years ago. We don’t need to return to it a third time.

There was much optimism then as Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal prepared to take the oath of office as governor. He had said a lot of great things in his campaign and swamped the field, with the promise that he could make a definitive break from the state’s dying corpse of a liberal populist political culture, unlike the outcome of the only previous semi-serious attempt, the governorship of Republican Buddy Roemer.

In retrospect, it was too much to expect. Jindal had won as much for his agenda as he had as a reaction to botched administration, as well as inferior policy-making, by Democrat Kathleen Blanco. And he did do as he said, making government smarter, as well as deliver on ethics and education (and to a lesser degree civil service) reform and on income tax cuts.

Yet Jindal didn’t do much to restrain the growth of government, and as GOP former state Sen. Conrad Appel (and who this week will join the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) who was an insider to Capitol machinations in this era hinted recently, likely because he couldn’t. Keep in mind that the GOP finally acquired legislative chamber majorities just before he won a second term, and even in his second term with some breathing space enough Republicans-In-Name-Only made efforts to trim government in any permanent way difficult.

Of course, Jindal didn’t help himself before his term was half up by switching into a more populist conservative direction which didn’t match the previous worldview underpinning his agenda that didn’t suit his style, and he then started to play safe on policy in the hopes of electoral advancement. If you’re shooting for national electoral prominence at the highest level, it’s distracting to try to continue laying the groundwork to change the culture back home.

As a result, the foundation laid was unstable and unable to resist a determined counterattack by liberal populism and its special interest remora. Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards did his best to bring back every bad policy that has caused Louisiana to blow opportunity after opportunity to fall even further behind the rest of the country than when Jindal had faced taking office, leaving a legacy of failure specializing in depopulation, economic malaise, and a declining quality of life – and then some, for Edwards went where no other governor had gone before in stumping for faddish intellectually and morally bankrupt social and environmental policies.

Now, Republican Jeff Landry stands at the same juncture as did Roemer and Jindal, but with distinct advantages. Perhaps the best way to analogize this moment is to consider the state’s preparedness, within government and among the electorate which can be called the level of maturity of its political culture, and potential to embrace a change in course akin to trying to grow productive viticulture.

Understand that significant political change, unless violently from below, generally operates in an indirect fashion where the mass public first articulates this desire at the top of the system, and with sustained desire it cascades down the system until the sufficient amount of change is achieved. One could argue that Republican Dave Treen narrowly winning the governorship in 1979 may have been a first sign of this, although more likely the stagnant American economy and particularly energy crisis and its impact that harmed Louisiana more than it helped until deregulation of oil and gas came around the time of Treen’s election, had much to do with damaging the Democrat brand, as well as other idiosyncratic factors (i.e., outgoing Democrat Gov. Edwin Edwards playing cards to maximize his chances of a successful challenge in 1983 rather than to elect a Democrat in 1979), that eclipsed any real desire among the majority of the Louisiana public to change the liberal populist course of the state’s political culture.

Yet if that desire had not been the driving factor in the 1979 contest, it had become so in 1987 where a battered energy sector and animus against Edwards mobilized at least a plurality of voters to support Roemer, who explicitly ran against Edwards specifically but more generally liberal populism. The problem for Roemer was he was like a vine transplanted into entirely unsuitable rocky, if not desert, soil. With few friends in the Legislature or elsewhere, he couldn’t accomplish much, and he blundered by reversing himself on some fiscal issues.

Outflanked by two populists for reelection in a contest that brought Edwards back, change stagnated while liberal populism retrenched. Still, the desire in the electorate for change continued to grow and even if it hadn’t reached critical mass enough to force its will in legislative elections, it did force out Edwards. But his successor Republican Mike Foster (like Roemer a converted Democrat) did little to challenge the orthodoxy, with an exception being education policy.

Backsliding resumed with the ascension of Democrat Kathleen Blanco to succeed Foster, but the electorate nearly prevented that when Jindal almost defeated her. The critical mass further grew closer as Republicans (although some being RINOs) began to make headway in legislative elections as the cascading effect grew in strength.

When Jindal took over, his transplanted vine found much better soil – not excellent, as liberal populist Democrats still had legislative majorities and dominated most of local government – that with care and effort could have become very productive. And he largely pursued that course in his first term, but after the first 18 months of his second term he mostly neglected that, and, as a result, to easily the vine was pulled by John Bel Edwards with the momentum lost and revanchist forces regrouped.

The liberal populism extension perpetrated by Edwards only fueled the public’s desire to condemn it to the ash heap. In the final analysis, the failures of liberal populism – which became more visible once Democrat Pres. Joe Biden replaced Republican former Pres. Donald Trump – simply became too apparent to enough Louisianans not only to sweep Landry into office but also to reinvigorate the Legislature into its first truly conservative majority, full spectrum in scope that rejects the idea that government is there to redistribute and to cater to special interests that create winners and losers. It had taken decades, but sufficient majorities for change had built in the public to complete the cascade down from the state’s chief executive to legislative offices, as well as to other elected executive branch officials.

Which means now the soil is extremely fertile for the kinds of policy changes Landry promises to pursue, and very likely to stick if the effort is put in. The death rattle of liberal populism in state government is at hand with a little fidelity and determination by its opponents, unlike in 1988 and 2008 when the fleeting promise was there but conditions not right that demanded more that could be brought to bear. Now the time is right, and four to eight years of inspired leadership hewing to genuine conservatism will complete a historic transformation of Louisiana’s political culture that cements into state government complementary conservative policy.

But it won’t happen without commitment, perhaps inspired by the fact that at this third inflection point Louisiana simply can’t afford to allow resurrection of liberal populism and re-empowerment of its special interest hangers-on that have held back the state for a century.