It’s been quite a while since I forced myself to endure one of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly press conferences. I know, it ought to be appointment viewing for Your Political Observer, but I’m my own boss here and I feel free to follow my muse and limit the self-sacrifices. Every gubernatorial presser takes a couple nibbles out of my soul.

But after his angry, neo-Trumpian press release about this week’s Vermont Labor Relations Board decision, I felt like I had to see how he’d follow up in his weekly presser.

And boy, did he ever. It was a festival of self-pity and blamecasting. Nothing is his fault; every problem we face is because of the incompetent spendthrifts in the Democratic Legislature.

(After seeing this performance, I’ve upped the odds on whether he will seek another term; if the chances of him running were 95%, they’re now at 99. And it’s gonna be a nasty campaign, although swaddled in his famously avuncular style. He’s got such a collection of receipts to cash in, he’s gonna need at least one more election cycle to clear his cache. Hell, he might stick around out of sheer spite until we’re asked to re-elect Phil Scott’s Head in a Jar in the year 2050.)

It’s the governor as innocent bystander. Which is a real stretch, considering that he is by far the most powerful person in state government. He is the chief of an executive branch with thousands of employees. His appointees run every department and agency. The Legislature, by contrast, consists of everyday people who get paid a pittance and have little to no staff support.

Let’s count ’em, shall we? The leaders of the House and Senate have one full-time staffer apiece. Each chamber has a small central staff to handle operations and paperwork. Each committee has a single staffer. The entire Legislature has two small support operations: the Joint Fiscal Office and the Legislative Counsel. Compare that to the small army of administrators, bureaucrats and line workers at Scott’s beck and call.

He runs the joint. If he can’t find ways to work across the aisle, that’s on him. I realize it’s no fun to face Democratic majorities for nearly a decade. But it’s his job to find common ground with opposition lawmakers who, after all, have as much of a mandate as he does. He has failed to do so, and that’s why so many of our problems have gotten worse during his tenure.

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