Chaos or calm?

This governor is no fun

“If you want to know why we have such a polarized, angry and bitter society, one reason is we take every disagreement that could be addressed in conversation and community and we turn it into a lawsuit. We take every morally supple situation and we hand it over to the legal priesthood, which by necessity is a system of technocratic rationalism, strained slippery-slope analogies and implied coercion.”

— David Brooks, on these pages,

just a few days ago

Ooo-wee, this was going to be a fun one! It had a mixture of all the explosive elements: Kids, same-sex couples, legal eagles with axes to grind, rulings and over-rulings, TNT and black powder — or at least a bunch of litigants on both sides bowing up at each other. And politics on top of that!

The religious right would come out in force on this one. After that, the even more holier-than-thous in the opposite corner would wag their fingers at the rest of us, shaming us for being so 2008. That is, backwards hicks from the woods who may have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into this century. Or maybe just the last one.

It was going to be a blast! Maybe part of six or seven news cycles. Protests might be involved! Crowds at the capitol building, waving signs, demanding action! In short, an editorialist’s dream come true.

Then the governor had to ruin it all. It all set up so nicely: After months of disagreements and fighting among the legal priesthood in this state, a judge finally had enough and ordered the state to stop issuing birth certificates. Minutes before business opened Friday morning, Judge Tim Fox of the Pulaski County Circuit ordered the state to stop issuing new birth certificates until its procedures for doing so could be applied evenly to all couples with babies. Including cases in which the couple is made up of two women. (The U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled the state’s procedure to be illegal.)

The whole system stopped. And dozens of people were literally waiting in the doorway, trying to get birth certificates for important enough reasons.

As the story was warming up, and would soon reach the boiling point, Gov. Asa Hutchinson took the whole thing off the fire.

Instead, the governor of this state — who is more responsible than fun — stepped into the situation and solved it. He ordered his state health director to immediately begin issuing certificates naming all new mothers, even in those situations when the baby has two. Simply put, the certificates would include spots for Parent 1 and Parent 2. And, to top it off, Asa Hutchinson told the department to issue corrected certificates, free of charge, to people who had been refused.

And everything went back to normal. The litigants went to their corners. Pols in both major parties used the R word — responsible. The government began churning out birth certificates again, a basic function of state government.

All because Asa Hutchinson apparently doesn’t care much about good copy.

Not only that, but it also seems as though Asa Hutchinson and his people had thought about this solution in advance. As if he thought the judge might act, and he needed to have a plan in place should the birth certificate office be shut down. It showed preparation, if not a flair for any dramatics, darn it.

This governor isn’t much fun when it comes to these sorts of things. More’s the pity for editorial writers. But the state is certainly better off having a working government. One might think the governor has that sort of thing high up on his list of priorities.