On his way out of office in late 1970, then-Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller commuted to life imprisonment the sentences of all 15 of the state's Death Row inmates.
He said he couldn't live with himself if he failed to meet his moral responsibility to spare those lives from a fate he deemed barbaric.
Mike Beebe's charmed governorship was spared for all eight years the moral question of carrying out an execution, thanks to lingering legal fights over drugs and protocols.
On his way out of office, Beebe intends to pardon his son, 34-year-old Kyle, on a conviction and probated sentence from 2003 for possessing marijuana with intent to deliver.
Beebe says youthful drug charges of that sort ought to be forgiven if demonstrably relegated to one's past. He says he is simply doing for his son what he has done for others similarly situated.
Obviously, Rockefeller's act is larger in all aspects--as morality, nobility, courage and history ... and as scandal, if you believe these acts to be scandalous.
I find neither scandalous. I admire Rockefeller's large action. I have no credible quarrel with Beebe's small one.
What interests me is how both actions are reflective of these governorships--Rockefeller's from 1967-71 as transformational, putting the Orval Faubus years behind and launching a period of racial moderation, progress and modernization; Beebe's as not transformational at all but almost wholly transactional and, as such, the most competent and successful transactional governorship in our state's history.
Transformational leadership looks to a legacy of change. Transactional leadership looks in the moment to deal effectively with current problems on their current terms.
Transformational leadership makes history. Transactional leadership makes for tidy problem-solving.
One form is not necessarily better than the other. The leadership style can be affected as much by time and events as personality.
Rockefeller couldn't actually transact much of anything. He passed next to nothing in the Legislature. His entire governorship was about a struggle to introduce a different Arkansas.
Beebe, a master of government and the legislative process, deftly transacted everything that came along.
Confronted by a revenue need for trauma centers, Beebe's governorship performed the extraordinary feat of getting cigarette taxes raised by a seemingly prohibitive three-fourths legislative vote.
Confronted by the damage to roads from heavy equipment for natural gas fracking, Beebe deftly negotiated an incremental increase in severance taxes on natural gas that again won that three-fourths vote.
Confronted by the Obama administration's offer of billions for Medicaid expansion toward universal health insurance--a transformational idea--Beebe stayed smartly detached. Leading bureaucrats in his employ and a few smart young Republican legislators cooked up the idea--a transformational one--of taking the money but spending it for private insurance for poor people.
Now the whole program is at great risk of abandonment under the new governor and new legislature.
It's not transformational, you see, if it doesn't last.
Beebe attempted something mildly transformational by pushing for incarceration reform in which nonviolent offenders would be kept out of prison. His aim was to slow the perilous drain of prison costs on his burning passion--the state budget.
But that reform has been lost to the greater pressure to reform parole, which, in turn, has caused the prison population to swell and county jails to fill. All of that has left Beebe's successor with an apparent need to build and maintain a new prison.
The last time I spoke with Beebe on these matters, he cited his administration's payment reforms for Medicaid--basing payments for treatment on a general definition of medical episodes and conditions, and paying for lumped services emphasizing good outcomes rather than paying automatically and separately for every doctor's visit and test and procedure. He said it would prove transformational.
We can hope.
Otherwise, Beebe has said he wants his legacy to be that Arkansans will no longer thank God for Mississippi, but walk with a bit of swagger in the confidence that they are better than that.
It turns out that if they indeed walk with that swagger, they'll do so as Republicans via a political realignment--a transformation--that occurred not because of Beebe's administration, but quite apart from it.
In this context: I wanted to let you know that, at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 10, in the great hall of the Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, I will have an hour-long public conversation with Beebe about these and other matters.
It's a fundraiser for LifeQuest of Arkansas, a noble program that offers classes and activities for senior citizens and for which I've led a class on politics and news events for more than a decade.
The discussion will be recorded by Talk Business and Politics for use on its weekly program at 9 a.m. Sundays on KATV, Channel 7.
You can reserve a $25 seat by going to lifequestofarkansas.org or calling (501) 225-6073.
Come see what our departing transactionalist-extraordinaire has to say about these things.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 12/02/2014