Replacing a Heroine with an Anti-Hero

Kathleen Sebelius’ swearing in as Secretary for Health and Human Services was a bitter sweet moment.

She has been a strong public servant. A dedicated, principled, thoughtful, and courageous leader who won respect and admiration from Kansans. The nation — and the tough challenges of American health care — merits having someone of her qualities in that seat.

On the other hand, there were two aspects of this appointment that were troubling.

As with former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, now head of Homeland Security, appointing Sebelius to the Cabinet moved from an almost assured (if she chose to run) Democratic Party pick-up in the 2010 Senate to, at best, a long shot that a Democratic candidate can win the seat. (And, as well, lowered by two the number of women likely to be part of the Senate come January 2011.)

Secondly, there was the question of how her state would be governed in her absence. In Arizona, Napolitano handed the keys over to a Republican. In Kansas, Sebelius handed keys over to then-Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, a “Democrat” (not that long ago Republican) who had promised, reportedly, to govern in much the way Sebelius governed. From an interview, last Friday:

The Eagle: Can you give us a specific way that your administration will differ from your predecessors?

Parkinson: Even though the governor and I agree on virtually every issue, the difference that you will see will be in emphasis. Governor Sebelius is a policy matter expert on health issues and so her focus for her 23 years of public service has been health issues. I have learned a lot about energy issues, so my emphasis is going to be a lot on energy.

And, when he said “energy”, what did he mean?

I don’t really care to have a legacy. But here is what I hope to do for the state, and if I could just pick one thing, what I would hope to do is to put us on a path so we are the renewable energy leader in this country. Because I view it as not only something good for the entire country, but I view it as a form of economic reinvestment for Western Kansas. I just view it as a continuation of everything we have done as a state. …

The second thing I hope to bring to the table… I really believe that I have a track record of being able to bring people together that have disputes and getting them resolved. Some of that could be in a very public setting such as trying to get the budget issues resolved. Some of it can be very private, for example going to the utility companies who had never built wind power before and getting them to build 1,000 megawatts.

The chair behind the Governor’s desk was still warm when Parkinson gave the lie to those promises and indications.

Sebelius won the admiration of many for her tough fight against Sunflower Electric’s fossil-foolish plans for building two new coal-fired electricity plants (totaling 1,400 megawatts of capacity).

In addition to the basic questions as to whether the new plants were even required and how building such polluting plants would be against concepts of helping build a sustainable energy future, an investment firm analysis concluded that moving forward with Sunflower’s plans would place “Sunflower Electric’s ratepayers … at significant [finanicial] risk.”

The concept was a lose-lose-lose situation, except for Sunflower Electric (who would be guarantee a profit) and the coal companies guaranteed decades of seeing their product go up in smoke.

Sebelius measured the situation and fought tenaciously against global warming denier (anti-science syndrome suffering) Republican Kansas legislature efforts to drive through these plants. And, right behind her (sometimes almost in front of her) in this fight was Lt. Gov. Parkinson, who bluntly stated that there would be legal action even if the legislature overrode Sebelius’ vetoes: