TALLAHASSEE - Public affairs are almost never as simple and uncomplicated as politicians often pretend. Gov. Jeb Bush was involved in two examples last week.
In the first, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to delay the oral arguments scheduled for Aug. 31 in the "Terri's Law" case. Bush is appealing Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird's decision to declare unconstitutional the law allowing Bush to keep brain-damaged Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube despite another judge's ruling that she wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive that way.
In accepting the case directly, as urged by the 2nd District Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court said in capital letters, "NO CONTINUANCES WILL BE GRANTED EXCEPT UPON A SHOWING OF EXTREME HARDSHIP." The governor claims to have one.
His lead counsel, Ken Connor, is supposed to be in Mississippi on Aug. 30 to begin a jury trial, postponed earlier at the other side's request, in which the judge has said there will be no more continuances. The plaintiff is a 70-year-old woman. As Bush's motion in the Florida case acknowledges, "the client's advanced age . . . is of paramount importance."
Indeed it is. What's more, the Mississippi trial was scheduled before the Schiavo hearing. That judge isn't likely to defer. Unless the Schiavo case is postponed, Bush has to find himself another lawyer. He doesn't want to do that because Connor's special experience and skills "simply cannot be duplicated by any other single attorney involved in this matter on behalf of the Governor." Michael Schiavo, who is his wife's guardian, disagrees. He and his lawyers don't see how it would hurt the Mississippi case for Connor to be gone for the day or two it would take to argue the Florida case.
I do not claim to know which side is right. There is, however, a huge irony involved.
The Mississippi client, whom Bush concedes also deserves Connor's expertise, is suing one of Beverly Enterprise's nursing homes over allegations of malnutrition, dehydration and bedsores. Such cases are a Connor specialty. He was won many of them, most recently a $6.5-million verdict over the malnutrition death of mentally retarded black man.
Connor is, you see, a trial lawyer. He is one of those trial lawyers whose profession Bush and his brother, the president, have made a career of demonizing. Not so long ago, Jeb was heard saying he wanted to "whack the trial lawyers," and tried his best to do it - the Senate more or less successfully resisting - with a draconian $250,000 cap on pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice cases.
Mel Martinez, the Senate candidate, is another story.
So is Connor. Bush personally recruited him, and he is saving Florida a bunch of money by representing the governor pro bono. Connor, a former president of Florida Right to Life and more recently head of the socially conservative Family Research Council, says he took on the Schiavo case because he believes the state has a duty toward "the rights of frail and vulnerable individuals."
This also happens to be why he so often points his legal lance at powerful nursing home chains and why he regards arbitrary limits on such lawsuits as "affirmative action for wrongdoers." One doesn't have to agree with Connor on abortion, or on the merits of the Schiavo case, to recognize his extraordinary fidelity to principle. Nor does one have to be a trial lawyer to wish the Brothers Bush were as consistent. Without the trial lawyers, nobody's life would be worth a dime.
In the other matter, Bush let off a head of steam with a two-page letter chiding T.K. Wetherell, the president of Florida State University, for having scored money from the Legislature that neither the governor nor the Board of Governors had sought. Bush said that's why he vetoed some of FSU's other money, which happened to include a $5-million psychology building that he had recommended. Bush also wrote in a similar vein, but not so strongly, to the chairman of Florida A&M's board of trustees and to the interim chief of the Byrd Alzheimer's Institute at the University of South Florida.
The irony there is Wetherell and the others were merely taking advantage of the management void Bush himself helped to create when he supported and signed legislation abolishing the Board of Regents and creating separate boards of trustees for each university. But for Bob Graham's initiative to recreate an overall Board of Governors, each of the schools would still be altogether free to play what Gov. LeRoy Collins once called "tiger in the jungle." The individual trustees still pick the presidents, however, and FSU's used the discretion to hire the best politician and lobbyist available.
Bush conceded to Wetherell a fear that "aggressive" lobbying by the individual schools "plays into the hands of the detractors of our governance reforms." Indeed it does, but shouldn't the governor have thought of that before he trashed the Regents? It certainly wasn't for lack of people trying to warn him.
