The 2008 Legislative session begins Feb. 12. If Carol Molnau is still Minnesota's commissioner of transportation on Feb. 13, it won't be because she has learned how to lead a critical state agency or how to advocate on behalf of the public for real support from her boss, Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
It will be because Democrats lost their nerve. And forgot why they ran for election.
Reports from the Capitol last week suggested that weak-kneed Democrats may be losing their resolve to fire Molnau and are scheming that they might benefit more, politically, by letting her stay at transportation -- despite the incompetence, cost overruns, poor planning and avoidable tragedies that have taken place.
How many people have to die before this state gets mad?
Molnau does double duty as Republican Pawlenty's elected lieutenant governor and as his appointed transportation commissioner. Since Aug. 1 of last year, when the Interstate 35W bridge fell, she also has been an albatross around Pawlenty's neck. Some Democrats think it would be more to their advantage to keep her hanging there, rather than to serve as stewards of the state.
This is the kind of junk that gives politics a bad name. As I said after the bridge collapse, good politics builds bridges and hospitals and schools. Bad politics can let them fall down. Everything is political, because politics is about what kind of life we want, and how we want to govern ourselves. The part of the process that makes people cynical is when the big considerations are trumped by small-minded jockeying for advantage and gamesmanship.
The DFLers are playing that game with Molnau. And the governor is playing it, too.
He stood behind Molnau at first, but is so far behind her now that he has vanished from sight. The reality is that he has washed his hands of his lieutenant's fate -- leaving it to her, she says, to decide whether to stay on as head of a $2 billion a year department that has come apart during her tenure.
