Whitman to sing Kumbaya

Maybe the headline is an exaggeration, but Meg Whitman’s proposal to create legislative teams, which she enunciated at a California Taxpayers Association meeting today, is almost as bad of an idea than singing Kumbaya with assembled legislators. According to the Sacramento Bee, “‘Let’s come together in teams,’ Whitman told an audience at the California Taxpayers’ Association’s annual meeting in Sacramento. ‘Who wants to be on the jobs team? Who wants to be on the government efficiency team?'”

Does anyone really think that legislators will do this? There is a separation of powers issue, for one thing. And legislators aren’t about to be told what to do by the governor (they will allow themselves to be told what to do by the public employee unions, however!). Whitman has a CEO’s mindset — bark an order and create a Dilbert-esque team and all the lackeys follow along, but politics doesn’t work that way. It’s amateur hour.

–Steven Greenhut