Editorial: Strickland path clear, but is it broad enough?

Updated 8:44 AM Thursday, January 28, 2010

Gov. Ted Strickland has apparently picked a theme for his re-election bid and his potential second term. He’s wrapping himself in green. Green jobs, to be specific.

In his State of the State speech Tuesday, Jan. 26, he led with alternative energy as a jobs source, and he pounded away at the theme. He said Ohio has been ranked by the Council of State governments as the leader in creating “green” jobs last year.

He proposed several initiatives to enhance the momentum — loans, tax breaks, educational efforts, Third Frontier.

He’s far from the first to see the potential connection between Ohio and a new energy economy. Environmental reformers have pitched the notion that Ohio should not see itself as a victim of environmental problems, just because it’s dependent on coal. It should see itself as the beneficiary of a new industry, one that can make the state a cleaner, better, more independent place to live.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, insists that any legislative effort in Washington to deal with global warming must be seen, certainly from Ohio’s perspective, as fundamentally a “jobs bill.”

The governor’s theme was not a radical departure for him. True, he has focused on education issues at other stages. (And he certainly had a lot to say about them in this speech.) But one of his first major initiatives was a “stimulus” or “jobs” bill aimed at fostering new technologies in energy and elsewhere.

Still, he has some work to do in convincing Ohio that he’s found a path that creates a really substantial number of jobs.

Necessity can be the mother of invention. Beyond the need for new energy forms, Ohio needs jobs — even more than most places. It was losing manufacturing jobs by the droves even before the rest of the country was hit by recession in late 2008.

The governor clearly hopes that his new emphasis will help him claim control of the political center. His November opponent, former Congressman John Kasich, is associated primarily with his call to gradually eliminate the state income tax.

Democrats will try to portray that as radical. They’re dreaming of discord within the Republican Party along the lines of that caused by J. Kenneth Blackwell in his run for governor in 2006. In a disastrous campaign, Mr. Blackwell had to back off his own tax plan (a ballot measure) largely because it scared local Republican officials.

Tonight, President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, will make his own effort to reestablish himself with the American political center. That will come after a year of bold, liberal activism, soaring deficits, the re-energizing of the conservative movement, drooping polls and an unexpected loss in Massachusetts.

Like Gov. Strickland, the president’s opponents could create an opportunity for him, being so conservative as to leave an opening in the center.

Ultimately, however, what matters most for the well-being of the two parties is not where they fit on the political spectrum. It is what matters most to the people: how the state and the nation do on jobs and other matters — but mostly, it would appear, jobs.

The governor outlined an approach that was low on partisanship and ideology. That offers hope of some progress in the legislature.

And the mere fact that there’s a plan, a direction, is a good thing. It beats a sense that everybody is flailing aimlessly. But whether it’s enough of a plan is a debate yet to be had.

— Cox News Service

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