Cuss (And Veto) Away, Ahnold!

I don't like cussing myself. I find it one of the vices least tolerable in others and least commendable in me, but I have to disagree with Professor John J. Pitney Jr.'s post on The Corner regarding Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto message.

Professor Pitney dislikes it because,

It probably took his staff a good deal of effort to devise the acrostic. So think about it: Amid a fiscal crisis requiring severe cutbacks, a public employee had to use government time and resources to carry out the governor’s potty-mouth prank. This incident sends the message that he does not take the crisis very seriously. And one hopes that he did not assign a female aide to the task: Such is the stuff of sexual-harassment lawsuits.

Nobody should expect elected officials to be perfect in their private lives. But we can expect them to behave like adults in their public lives. By pulling a stunt that would land a junior-high-school kid in detention, the governor has flunked this standard.

Say what you want, but the more time the government wastes sending cryptic or not so cryptic notes to one another is time they don't spend spending money or figuring out ways to waste it. I hope he sends veto messages to nearly all of the Democratic legislature.