Gov. Jeb Bush's second inaugural reiterated his desire for minimalist government but didn't mention state's money problems that lie ahead. It was his day to do as he wished.

On a chill but gloriously sunny day in Tallahassee, Gov. Jeb Bush enunciated once again his vision of a minimalist government that looks to the "kindness and caring" of the people -- but not to their taxes -- to confront and conquer poverty and other problems. Giving flight to that fancy, Bush remarked that a truly mature society would eventually "make these buildings around us empty of workers; silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill." (No comparison intended, governor, but Karl Marx too envisioned a stateless society, albeit at the end of a very different road.)

Acknowledging that "this is a distant destination," Bush also recalled some advice by the late LeRoy Collins, "the man I consider to be Florida's greatest governor," to the point that a leader shouldn't go so far out in front that the people can't follow.

Collins was indeed Florida's greatest governor. Bush could not follow a brighter star -- if that were, indeed, what he is doing.

Speaking in December 1958 as chairman of the National Governors' Conference, Collins expressed a strikingly different philosophy of government.

"We in America recognize that our people, as individuals and in private pursuits, can accomplish a vast amount for themselves. But we also realize there are limitations to this," he said. "And where these natural limitations on individual and private ability end, I feel governmental responsibility begins.

"For government is the one vehicle through which all the people can work together to accomplish goals which they, as individuals and through private initiative and resources, are unable to achieve.

"Just as it should not meddle where individuals or private interests are doing the job well, so should government never hesitate to act boldly and imaginatively in those fields where individuals are unable or unwilling to get the necessary job done . . ."

Writing as an ex-governor in November 1987, Collins acknowledged that "It is always a politically tough job to impose taxes to raise revenue.

"But at times it becomes a duty not to be evaded and one that should not be feared . . ."

Collins had devoted part of his second inaugural address, on a similarly splendid Tallahassee January morning 45 years ago, to a litany of needs -- for highways, public schools, universities and other infrastructure -- for which he would shortly ask the Legislature to raise taxes.

Not a word in Bush's second inaugural so much as hinted at the $1-billion or more that legislators will have to scrounge somewhere just to meet present obligations, let alone the class-size reductions that voters mandated two months ago or the full state funding of courts for which they voted four years ago.

But of course an inauguration ceremony belongs to the governor who fairly won it. It was Bush's day to indulge as he wished. Reality will crash the party soon enough.

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