Gibbons just lacks it

What is the deal with the turtlenecks?

I’m not sure who is providing Gov. Jim Gibbons his fashion advice lately, but Nevada sure could use a leader who knows how to fill a suit.

On Monday, the governor of the people came to Las Vegas from Carson City to be a part of the big, televised, share-your-pain hearing about the valley’s health care crisis. The meeting has been the community’s only real release in the weeks since public health officials announced that six patients of an endoscopy clinic run by Dr. Dipak Desai had contracted hepatitis during routine preventive care.

There are tens of thousands of stories of personal anguish. Beyond those infected, which is nearly impossible to get beyond, people are scared, confused and justifiably angry.

They have yet to find comfort. They call journalists, they vent to legislators and they wait on hold at more agencies than you can find in the phone book.

When the governor comes down here to be seen (at grand openings and county conventions and, yes, painful community meetings), he is supposed to instill confidence and bring credibility to the function.

Yet there he was late Monday afternoon, with temperatures approaching 80 degrees in the valley, wearing a turtleneck.

At least when Jimmy Carter put on a cardigan he was trying to send a message about international policy.

When Gibbons trots out the turtlenecks (or, more regularly, the mock turtle) he looks like he’s trying to poke out of a shell. But nothing ever emerges — not warmth, not life, not heart.

Critics have called the governor insensitive and clueless. I prefer soulless.

This is a man who told me that across-the-board budget cuts of 6 percent helped equalize the pain for a variety of agencies.

I asked if it made sense to subject some chronically understaffed and underserved social service areas to the same cuts as, say, the department that buys fax machine toner, pointing out that some government services grow faster than others.

“In some you have 100 percent growth,” he answered.

Of course he’s right. If it’s a new program that never existed, it would “grow” 100 percent. But the answer showed he’s more comfortable arguing numbers than policy considerations.

There is no guiding philosophical reason why Gibbons cuts health services at the same rate as the motor pool, because he has no driving philosophy beyond no new taxes.

Even if you advocate no new taxes, you can still get there without slicing mental health or prenatal care, if, in fact, you care about something.

It’s much easier, of course, to paint politicians as insensitive when you have Sen. Pantsuit dodging imagined bullets, or Mr. 100-Year-War inculcating us about real ones.

After Gibbons gave his “I swear I won’t raise your taxes” speech to the Clark County Republican Convention a few weeks ago, he strode off the dais in his mock turtleneck and blazer and tried to work the crowd. Gibbons would reach over awkwardly into the rows, sometimes grabbing left hands. These voters were not exactly swooning, and it didn’t help that Mr. Mock Turtle was making a mockery of the rope line.

Some politicians are just no good at glib or grab. And that works if they are good at, say, governing.

But Gibbons is not exactly a wonk.

And his upcoming Boots and Rhinestones Ball notwithstanding, he doesn’t exactly look comfortable outside of a flight suit. Maybe Gibbons, a former commercial and military pilot, just feels trapped by the monotony of state problems. What could be more boring to a top gunner than “only six” people contracting hepatitis?

When you’re an Operation Desert Shield hero, it must be really mundane to see your own desert filled with “for sale” signs.

In “The Simpsons Movie,” the animated President Arnold Schwarzenegger is confronted with an environmental tragedy. “Everything is crisis this and end-of-the-world that,” he bemoans in the Oval Office. “No one opens with a joke. I miss Danny DeVito.”

I’m not sure what Gibbons misses, but it’s clear he’s not preoccupied with the budget crisis or the foreclosure mess or the unfathomable hepatitis disaster. Maybe he’s just biding his time, hoping a MiG pilot goes nuts one year during Red Flag exercises at Nellis and fires on the still-under-construction Sawyer Building. That would be a real international situation, not some drab bureaucratic budgeting scenario.

At least when he was in Washington, D.C., as a Nevada congressman, he got to take exciting junkets into the heart of the Colombian drug war to offset the boring legislative calendar.

Now he’s stuck in a real state with real problems.

No matter if Gibbons wears a suit or a sweater. It’s clear his heart isn’t in it.

Contact Erin Neff at eneff@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2906.