Gov. Mike Beebe is presumably down to his last days in public office.
He is definitely finishing up his term as governor, but "presumably" is in that sentence because Democrats will rag the popular chief executive to run for something else until he persuades them that he really intends to retire.
The term-limited governor apparently hasn't even convinced his wife, Ginger, he's really quitting.
"Ginger thinks it's crazy that I'm going to play golf all the time or go fishing or sit on my can," he told a reporter recently. "She said, 'I know you, that's not going to happen.'"
She's most likely right. That isn't his nature.
But that still doesn't mean he'll head right back to political life, even if it is hard to imagine him anywhere but in the thick of Arkansas politics.
The 68-year-old Beebe is wrapping up 32 years in state government -- 20 in the state Senate, four as attorney general and eight as governor.
Arkansas' then-new term limits pushed him out of the Senate, or his constituents in the Searcy area might still be sending him to the chamber where he thrived.
That's where he learned the nuances of the state budget in general and school funding in particular, pursuits that certainly prepared him for his last 12 years in statewide office.
Beebe was the Arkansas attorney general, advising the governor and Legislature during critical years of court-ordered school funding reform. Thankfully, his former legislative colleagues listened as he helped steer the state out of a constitutional crisis.
Then, as governor, he kept Arkansas in the traces as the state lived by those reforms and racked up measurable gains in public education.
He also delivered on a campaign promise to do away with most of the state sales tax on groceries, albeit incrementally. The tax was 6 percent when he made the promise. It is 1.5 percent now and is scheduled to drop to just one-eighth percent by 2018. (For the record, voters constitutionally mandated that last one-eighth percent tax in 1996 and earmarked the revenue for conservation use.)
Beebe underpromised and overdelivered, as he puts it.
He even found a way to work with a Republican-controlled Legislature in his last term, helping to craft Arkansas' "private option" Medicaid expansion program.
Their collective efforts enabled more than 213,000 Arkansans to enroll, using federal funds to help buy private insurance for them and their families. The program, which has become a national model, was nonetheless targeted by many conservative candidates in last year's elections. It may or may not survive. But it will stand among the major accomplishments in Beebe's administration.
Another Beebe initiative, aimed at getting away from a fee-for-service approach to paying for health care, focused instead on treatment results and cost containment.
Less visible perhaps but more impactful over the long haul is the way Beebe led the government at-large, minding the store and hawking that budget.
He matched resources to what he defined as twin objectives in education and economic development and kept the government steadily going even when revenue dropped.
His practices earned him a lot of respect and should set an example for future governors.
Beebe's political successes are obvious and the reason he's still being pursued as a candidate for other office, possibly the U.S. Senate sometime down the road.
The governor has enjoyed a remarkably high approval rating through the years, most recently 67 percent in the 2014 Arkansas Poll and higher still in others.
Beebe won his second term with a 75-county sweep even as the state elected Republicans to three other statewide offices (lieutenant governor, secretary of state and land commissioner) and put Republican majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature.
The further reddening of Arkansas politics resulted in 2014 in the election of a full slate of Republicans to all of the constitutional offices and stronger Republican majorities in both the state House and Senate.
Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson will soon replace Beebe at the helm of state government, facing the same challenges Beebe and a host of other governors before him have faced.
While much of the anticipation for the new administration has a partisan bent, the truth is the fundamental job is the same for Democratic and Republican governors.
Hutchinson would do well to spend his days in office as productively as Beebe has with his underpromise-and-overdeliver strategy.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 01/07/2015