Full disclosure: I have done some writing for Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher. If you think politics is hardball at the national level, you ought to take a lesson from what goes on in the states. Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher was defeated for re-election last night by longtime pol Steve Beshear–not that the name matters; pretty much any Democrat was going to win this time around. That’s because Governor Fletcher made the first good, hard pass at dismantling a grim, grimy and rough-as-gravel political culture that determines who gets jobs and what gets done in the state capital of Frankfort. Fletcher got his reputation handed back to him as confetti.

Fletcher is a singularly accomplished fellow: physician, Air Force pilot, businessman, member of Congress, clergyman, biblical polyglot. Not that any of these things qualify one as an expert in public policy, but they do suggest the qualities of a leader, and the ability to master complexity. In a private conversation that I don’t think he’d mind me revealing at this point, post-election, he told me that he wanted to be governor mostly because the problems that a governor addresses looked interesting. And if problems are interesting, then Kentucky is very interesting.

Fletcher started out by trimming the state’s various departments (known as cabinets) from 14 down to 9. To help create jobs and slow the flow of high school and college graduates out of state, he introduced a program to expand the reach of broadband to the mostly overlooked rural heart of the state. He worked for healthcare solutions, especially in terms of preventive care, for a state that sits sadly and perpetually near the top in diabetes, heart disease and preventable chronic conditions. He had plenty more in mind, all quite agreeable to any and everyone, all the kinds of improvements any Kentucky governor would (hopefully) propose. And none of it particularly partisan.
And that was the problem.

Kentucky politicians and bureaucrats, like those in many if not most states, rely on services provided by friends, and friends of friends. As the first Republican governor in 30 years, Fletcher didn’t owe anybody in that old political overstructure much of anything. And if the governor didn’t owe those longtime patriarchs and patrons anything, they themselves wouldn’t have anything to trade with their own minions. A Republican had no obligation to feed the Democratic machine.

So Fletcher’s demise came in short order. An ambitious attorney general (”AG” which, in politics, they say also stands for “aspiring governor”) declared that the labyrinth of hiring laws that for three decades of Democratic governors had been interpreted as “go along to get along” should now be interpreted narrowly and precisely–in other words, in opposition to whatever Fletcher did. The tiny stable of political reporters at the Louisville Courier-Journal–a group of men pretty much serving as a ladies auxiliary to the state Democratic Party–took the glee of a child at Christmas in carrying innuendo for the AG. Quickly, a lot of folks in the administration lost jobs and reputation–later restored by the courts when the phony charges were dismissed, though the press was uninterested in helping repair the careers they helped end.

Good people, ruined. Opportunities to improve a state that has clearcut problems got put on hold for four years. And none of this–none of it–happened because of differences over policy. It happened because a lot of people accustomed to power and influence suddenly lost it. They decided to get it back even if it took tearing down many good people in the process.

I tend to believe that most folks in politics want to do the right thing. But if you don’t believe there are truly malevolent people in that game, come to Kentucky.

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