Lamont getting us through pandemic
This has been the state’s most prolonged shutdown in the last 50 years. During these difficult and frightening times, people depend often on the media — and social media — to show them a leader who will be honest, but hopeful about whether better times are ahead.
In the Great Depression, the United States had Franklin D. Roosevelt. In World War II, Britain had Winston Churchill. In the 1978 Blizzard, Connecticut had Gov. Ella T. Grasso. In 2004, we had Gov. M. Jodi Rell restoring faith after Gov. John G. Rowland resigned amid corruption charges. In 2012, Gov. Daniel P. Malloy helped to reinstate confidence and stability in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And now, we have Gov. Ned Lamont at the helm.
This pandemic of historic proportion is affecting and changing every part Connecticut life. For Grasso, Rell and Malloy, their time in the historic-event hot seat was relatively short compared to what Lamont is experiencing. Unlike Gov. Lamont’s predecessors, he isn’t dealing with a short-term shutdown of the government or state, but a long-term one with significant consequences of varying degrees. And, unlike his predecessors, he will have to deal with these unfolding issues for years to come.
More so than governors of the past, these issues will define his leadership. I and many others around the state watch him daily to try to get a feel for where he’s taking us. A recent Hartford Courant/Sacred Heart University poll gave Lamont high marks for his response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sixty-five percent approved of Lamont’s overall handling of the crisis and 82.7 percent agreed with his decision to close nonessential businesses.
I can see why. When I watch him, I don’t see — nor feel — that he is a stiff-shirt, weaselly, disingenuous politician reading from a script and stumbling through incomplete or vague answers. Instead, I see a guy who is trying hard and is talking to me, plainly, as if we were discussing our feelings over a cup of coffee.
“April is the opposite month,” he says in his well-known folksy way during a public service announcement. “The opposite of everything I’ve ever told my kids: Don’t go to school. Don’t go visit your grandparents. Don’t go outside and play hoops with friends. Don’t go to a worship service.”
In public statements like this, he’s telling me some frank news, just like I’d expect from a true leader. However, he has coupled it with the reassurance that we’ll get through it. He’s tempering my expectations and not sugar-coating his response to my desire for things to get better, yet he’s also giving me hope. He’s also standing up for our state on national newscasts, explaining the situation and his ideas in language easily understood.
And that is classic Ned Lamont. He’s always spoken that way, and it’s needed now more than ever.
In “Leadership on the Line,” Martin Linsky wrote, “The hope of leadership lies in the capacity to deliver disturbing news and raise difficult questions in a way that people can absorb, prodding them to take up the message rather than ignore it or kill the messenger.” He also said leadership is an improvisational art and what you actually do from moment to moment cannot be scripted. To be effective, you must respond to what is happening.
That is also classic Ned Lamont. In his own personal down-home and across-the-kitchen-table style, he is responding to not just state residents’ fears, but also their concerns for the future, dreams for their children and need for stability. It’s an emotional connection that’s authentic and real.
If this propels him into the next phase of cautiously but confidently bringing Connecticut back into business, he’ll have a well-deserved place in history with other governors carved into the stone of the state Capitol.
Bill Seymour, Glastonbury