Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely. This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).
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25.1.17
Yenni becoming Jefferson Parish's version of Weiner
If you haven’t seen the movie Weiner, to get the gist of it just follow around
Jefferson Parish Pres. Mike Yenni.
The film profiles the hapless former Rep. Anthony
Weiner, who resigned from Congress after it emerged he had sexted, pictures
included, with various women not his wife. He then made a comeback attempt,
running for mayor of New York City, which became derailed when more texts and
pictures occurring after his resignation came to public light. The third time
proved the charm upon revelation of a yet another batch months involving a
minor before last year’s election – just before releasing the film – when his
wife, Huma Abedin, served as a top aide to Democrat presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton. Abedin
announced their separation and Weiner went into rehab.
Filmmakers happened to document the mayor’s race,
starting out chronicling what they thought would turn out as an interesting
story of redemption that mutated into farce. Throughout, Weiner seems offended whenever
any interviewer, questioner, or fellow candidate brings up his behavior of the
past and then-present, replying combatively and insisting the only relevant
criteria on which to judge him are political issue preferences of the day.
This cluelessness of four years past over a
thousand miles away now Yenni seems to replicate. Finally venturing into a
forum for public commentary months after it surfaced that he had texted
suggestively to a male minor and allegedly
engaged in sexual conduct, the married father fielded
questions on Eric Asher’s
WGSO radio talk show. He sounded nonplussed that Asher and callers insisted
on asking or commenting about the incident, which has prompted a recall against
him for his refusal to resign, as a number of parish officials have called on
him to do.
Like Weiner, Yenni seems unable to fathom that
people don’t evaluate politicians solely on their promises about what they want
to do in office, in the process ignoring observations first recorded some 2,500
years ago. Back in the day when issue preferences didn’t matter because no
genuine republic existed, Plato asserted that leadership primarily defined
politics (he argued that Athens possessed a participatory democracy, but one
that had an extremely restricted franchise). The politician, he said, had an
obligation to lead people to a good life.
But people would not follow a leader who they
identified as having bad character. They had to trust the leader and his
vision, and they could not if that person acted in ways they found unsettling.
While issues have importance in a democracy, a majority of people don’t wish to
devote all but the most cursory effort to understanding and evaluating these,
preferring instead to place faith in a leader to carry out a very general and
broad set of platitudes about government with which they agree. If they can’t
trust someone to do that, they won’t back that guy.
In short, people do not believe they can have a
leader assist them in attaining a better life if they question his judgment, an
evaluation most handily made by seeing how he comports himself in the basic
things in life, such as familial fidelity and in the appropriateness of his
relationships with others. One who makes poor decisions in these matters brings
up too much doubt for most of the citizenry.
Yenni seems not to understand this and the related
fact that his transgression distracts significantly from his ability to pursue
an agenda in government, especially with a recall effort against him gaining
significant steam and an apparent federal investigation into Yenni’s texting. His
wounded presidency detracts from the ability of him as chief executive to have
Jefferson Parish government operate optimally. His resignation or successful
recall need not wait on potential documentarians to observe it.
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