Grandstanding

Gov. Jim Douglas was ambushed in Philadelphia last week by a producer from the Bill O'Reilly television show, who demanded to know how many more little girls Vermonters would murder.

Admittedly it was a difficult, unexpected moment for the governor, but he missed a chance to tell Fox News viewers the important story, which is that Vermont regularly rates, in the view of national child welfare organizations, as among the safest and best states in the nation to raise a child. What he did instead was to blame Vermont's Democrats.

A few days previously, Douglas had declaimed solemnly that it would be wrong to play politics with the tragic murder of Brooke Bennett, decrying "a great deal of talk, finger-pointing, and grandstanding in recent days …" But if his response to Fox News is not politicizing tragedy, we don't know what is.

Similarly, it is hard to interpret his call for a special session of the Vermont legislature, demanding passage of three symbolic anti-crime bills, as anything but an attempt to use this tragedy as a way of raising the political fortunes of Republicans, including himself, in this election year.

If Douglas had merely called for an open-ended session in which all Vermont legislators could fashion a response to a complicated tragedy that is both criminal and social in nature, we might have been persuaded. But no. The governor wanted "a one-day special session for the sole purpose" of passing the bills which he was demanding and which, he knew, had been rejected in the past by Democrats in the legislature. From the beginning, the governor couched his proposal in political terms, suggesting that the Democratic legislature would probably block his ideas.

Later, in his official comments backing away from a special legislative session Douglas again placed political blame on House Speaker Gaye Symington (his opponent in the governorship race) and Sen. President Peter Shumlin. He said they were "impeding" progress "to protect our communities from violent, sexual predators," although he did have to admit that none of his proposals would have prevented Brooke Bennett’s death.

As to the governor's legislative demands, including the so-called Jessica's Law and his earlier pet proposal to keep people in prison after their terms have expired, the Democrats are right. The laws won't work, and they are likely to make matters worse. In that belief, legislators are backed up by law enforcement prosecutors and child welfare organizations throughout Vermont.

Criminal justice researchers have long known that crimes are not best deterred by longer prison sentences, though that might seem to be the logical remedy. What does deter crime is an increasing likelihood in the criminal's mind that he will be caught.

What we need to prevent these crimes is not harsher automatic penalties but more sophisticated investigators, better networks of professionals who can see ugly situations developing, more cops. All of these things cost money, and Gov. Douglas’s budgets have not provided them.

As it happens, Windsor Co. State’s Atty. Robert Sand proposed, in response to the tragedy, that Vermont hire more investigators to assist the sexual abuse teams in each county. When Sand, a law enforcement man himself, made that suggestion, the governor's people said he was playing politics.

Go figure.

Politically speaking, Gov. Douglas will probably win this round, by playing into the passions of good-hearted citizens at a terrible time. But it sounds like "grandstanding" to us.