A real leader should be ‘an anchor,’ at least, during a crisis
We can all agree, surely, that it’s bad “optics” for an elected official to leave the state they represent while it’s in the midst of a crisis. And optics, in such a situation, aren’t merely a matter of public relations.
“I would say that one of the roles of a leader is to serve as an anchor during times of crises,” said L. Douglas Kiel, professor of public affairs and administration at the University of Texas at Dallas, on Tuesday.
“One doesn’t have to be an expert in leadership to know that,” he continued. “It’s kind of common sense.”
“This is not a very high bar that needed to be met,” Kiel added.
Some of our state leaders could use such a reminder.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, has said that his decision to fly with his family to Cancun on Wednesday afternoon for a little vacation was “obviously a mistake.”
It’s a mistake you shouldn’t dwell on, though, according to the Republican lawmaker, who booked a return flight back to Texas shortly after landing in Mexico, at which point photos had already gone viral of him toting a well-stuffed roller bag at the airport.
“I want to diagnose the media,” Cruz said Monday, in an interview with right-wing radio host Dana Loesch. “The media is suffering from acute Trump withdrawal, where for four years every day they could foam at the mouth and be obsessed with Donald Trump, and now that he has receded from their day-to-day storyline, they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
The coverage of his ill-fated beach vacation, he continued, is “a bit much.”
In another interview, with the podcast Ruthless, Cruz also lamented that one of his wife Heidi’s friends had leaked screenshots of the group chat messages in which she proposed the Mexico trip.
“It's a sign of how ridiculously politicized and nasty and just — y’know, here’s a suggestion, just don’t be a--holes! Like, just treat each other as human beings,” Cruz said.
Good advice. The senator should look in the mirror next time he issues it.
Cruz is one of several elected officials in Texas who have found themselves roundly lambasted after leaving the state during the midst of last week’s crisis.
Attorney General Ken Paxton skipped off to Utah at some point midweek with his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton. He had meetings
with Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, according to the latter’s office, on Wednesday and Friday.
The Paxtons, through their respective spokespeople, have declined to specify whether taxpayers funded this trip — although it would be naive to assume that we didn’t.
In a series of tweets Monday, Paxton asserted that he and his wife decamped only after sitting in a dark house for the better part of 72 hours, and that he effectively had no alternative.
“From my dark home, I pledged to go after price gougers, I opened an investigation into (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) and other power companies,” Paxton tweeted. “I had previously planned meetings in Utah to meet with the Utah Attorney General on imminent legal issues that required my physical presence to complete.”
Actually, according to his own office, Paxton issued civil investigation demands to ERCOT and 11 other power companies on Friday — in other words, after leaving his dark home and arriving safely in Utah. And it’s not clear why his meetings with Reyes needed to be conducted in person, or why they couldn’t be postponed.
But such details may be irrelevant, from Paxton’s perspective.
“While the media does its job to drum up controversies by writing stories to generate clicks and revenue, I will continue to do my job to enforce the law and ensure that law enforcement has all the tools to keep Texans safe,” added the attorney general.
Even before the latest controversy, Paxton was under indictment, charged with several violations of state securites law, as well as under federal investigation due to allegations by whistleblowers that he has abused his office.
He, like Cruz, could take a lesson from state Rep. Gary Gates, a Republican who represents House District 28 in Fort Bend County.
Gates, like Cruz and Paxton, has received some backlash since it became known that on Wednesday he took a private plane to Orlando, Fla.
“So many of the constituents were in the same predicament and they did not have the chance to take a flight and leave town,” said Cynthia Ginyard, the chair of the Fort Bend Democratic Party, in an interview with KPRC.
That’s true. But Gates has responded by addressing the questions his critics raised, rather than scolding them for asking.
In a lengthy email to Ginyard, which his office forwarded to me, Gates ran down the situation.
His wife is recovering from a bout of chronic bronchitis; an adult daughter, who lives with them, has special needs.
On Tuesday, they lost power, and their house flooded. On Wednesday, Gates lost access to internet and cellphone service. That meant he couldn’t communicate with staff, constituents or the roughly 25,000 tenants in the 8,500 apartments he owns in the Houston area, most of whom had also lost essential services. In light of all of that, he decided to work remotely for a couple of days.
“Leadership is not always about making a choice for public appearances,” Gates argued.
Fair enough, although Ginyard wasn’t persuaded that Gates’ decision was the right one.
“My position is this: We all know it’s standard protocol that the captain remains on the ship,” she told me Tuesday.
That is standard protocol, and it should be.
For leaders to be there during a crisis shows that they grasp the seriousness of the situation, and are doing whatever they can to help Texans respond to it.
One of the things that helped Texans make it through the last wretched week, frankly, was the fact that we saw so many men and women at all levels of government — or simply in their capacity as private citizens — rise to the occasion in various ways.
The elected officials who had other priorities last week may not appreciate the ensuing scrutiny, but they shouldn’t dismiss it as idle carping about mere “optics.”