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Gov. Daniels takes his second oath of office from U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar on Monday morning as his family watched in the south atrium of the Indiana Statehouse. (Pool Photo Courtesy of Indianapolis Star)
By BRIAN A. HOWEY
INDIANAPOLIS - Giving an intellectual version of “Chance the Gardner’s” view of economic cycles, Gov. Mitch Daniels promised a greener, bolder Indiana and warned of an “April frost” that could nip the regeneration of sprouts in his inaugural Statehouse address Monday morning titled, “A Springtime We Can Summon.”
The governor took his second oath of office as the state and nation endures what could be the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression. “Not even the cold realities of a wintry world economy can obscure the signs of spring in our state,” Daniels said before a packed south atrium of the Indiana Statehouse. “Out of economic erosion and indistinction, Indiana now excels in every assessment of appeal to new plantings of future jobs and prosperity. A blossoming culture of enterprise foretells the coming vigor of a youthful economy that regenerates new sprouts faster than its trusted old branches decay and fall away.”
Gov. Daniels and wife Cheri during his taking of the oath. (Pool Photo courtesy of Indianapolis Star)
Daniels continued, “Best of all, a new mentality has taken root, a new boldness born of risks successfully run and change successfully delivered. In overwhelming numbers, Hoosiers have declared that we are unafraid to lead, to try the new before others do, and that we like the results of doing so.”
In the 1979 movie “Being There,” - released at the beginning of the last major economic downturn, actor Peter Sellers played “Chance” the Gardner, whose simplistic manifestations of gardening were misconstrued as an economic catalyst. In one scene, the “President Bobby” character played by Jack Warden asked Chance, “Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?”
After a long pause, Chance responded, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.”
Daniels campaigned in 2004 after 16 years of Democratic gubernatorial rule by telling Hoosiers that “every garden needs weeding.” The Republican governor won an emphatic victory over Democrat Jill Long Thompson with 58 percent of the vote in November as economic storm clouds gathered. The U.S. Congress had just passed a $700 billion economic stimulus package to bail out Wall Street while credit began disappearing from Hoosier banks, dealing a crippling blow by Indiana’s automotive industry.
By December, it became clear that the Detroit 3 and their suppliers - representing at least 144,000 Hoosier workers and 20 percent of the economy - could collapse. It came on the heels of convulsions in the RV industry. Congress issued $17 billion in “bridge loans” to the automakers just before the end of the year. But by this April, there is still a chance the industry could collapse, coming on top of an Indiana unemployment rate that went from 4.6 percent at the beginning of 2008 to 7.2 percent in December. General Motors and Chrysler must present restructuring plans by March 31 or their loans could be recalled by Congress.
Daniels tried to sound a message of hope. “Best of all, a new mentality has taken root, a new boldness born of risks successfully run and change successfully delivered,” Daniels said after Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, Attorney General Greg Zoeller and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett took their oaths of office. “In overwhelming numbers, Hoosiers have declared that we are unafraid to lead, to try the new before others do, and that we like the results of doing so.”
The governor attempted to take on the state’s legacy as resistant to change. “No more will historians write that we are backward and out of step,” he insisted. “That we are, at best, ‘gradualists’ who prefer to keep to ‘the more secure edge of the river.’ The Indiana they depicted would never have led the nation in capturing international investment, cutting and reforming property taxes, or bringing peace of mind to those without health insurance. That Indiana would never have devised a way to build public infrastructure in record amounts without a penny of taxes or borrowing, or to liberate the new infrastructure of fiber and frequency in a nationally innovative way.”
Daniels continued, “In dramatic contradiction of old stereotypes, Hoosiers have announced emphatically to a world that belongs to the creative and nimble, where fortune truly favors the bold, that we not only accept change but are prepared to lead it, and invite the rest of America to follow us.”
In essence, President Elect Barack Obama has taken a page from Daniels’ Major Move infrastructure program as he attempts to rush a stimulus package through Congress to create jobs by rebuilding infrastructure. U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, who presided over the ceremony, and U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, U.S. Reps. Mike Pence, Baron Hill, Dan Burton and Brad Ellsworth were in attendance, as well as former Gov. Otis “Doc” Bowen.
By spring, with a potential auto industry contraction or collapse and uncertainty whether President Bush’s bailout or the Obama stimulus plan will work, the governor appeared to warn Hoosiers. “Early spring is a tentative and unpredictable time,” he said. “Winter never looses its grip without a struggle. Indiana’s new garden will need constant tending, and continual nurture, if it is to remain fertile and hospitable to more growth and opportunity. One of America’s great innovators taught ‘When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.’ Indiana in our day, with deep and lasting reverence for our ripe traditions, has chosen the green path of change, with all its newness and uncertainty, with the awkwardness and discomfort that comes with youth. A commitment to rejuvenate our state, and ourselves, through the inevitable setbacks and mistakes, must be the enduring memory and legacy of these years of ours.”
The word “green” appeared a half dozen times in the Daniels address and underlines the state’s commitment to developing battery powered cars, hybrids, clean coal technology and the production of liquid fuels from biomass. He added, “Spring’s first flowers are always at risk. The frosts of fear can nip the most promising and beautiful of buds. If Hoosiers emerge from our winter’s sleep only to see the shadows of our doubts and retreat from them, then winter will return, all the more frigid for the fragile hopes it cuts short. But, unlike the groundhog of fable, we have the outcome in our power. If we choose to face forward, into the sun, casting our shadows behind us, we can summon the springtime, and command it to come.”
Thus, in the movie “Being There,” the Melvyn Douglas character Benjamin Rand, observed of Chance the Gardner, “I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.”
Chance the Gardener: “Yes! There will be growth in the spring!”
To which President Bobby explained, “Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time. I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.”
For Hoosiers girding for a long uncertain winter, they can only hope it would be as simple as a Hollywood script.
Daniels imported quotes of his own, borrowing from Jim Henson’s Kermit the Frog and Abraham Lincoln in the speech’s final paragraph: “A philosopher of our time observed, ‘It’s not easy being green’, and most surely it is not. But it becomes easier with practice. Each new creative action adds spring to one’s step and confidence to move even more boldly to the next challenge. ‘With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.’ And that is to leave a brighter, greener Indiana to the young people so soon to follow us.”
On Tuesday, Daniels departs from his “poetry” of the inaugural for “prosaic” and detail of his fifth State of the State Address at 7 p.m. before a joint session of the Indiana General Assembly.
Tags: Attorney General Greg Zoeller, Gov. Mitch Daniels, Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, Peter Sellers, Sen. Dick Lugar, Sen. Evan Bayh, Supt. Tony Bennett
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This entry was written by and posted on January 12, 2009 at 2:47 pm and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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