Why Sweat the Setting When the News Is So Good?

Watching Gov. Gray Davis on the Capitol steps uncomfortably signing the state budget Tuesday, I kept thinking of the Noel Coward ditty. Only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” the songwriter observed.

Mad Dog Davis was not looking anything like the self-defined pragmatic moderate, who’d surely have enough common sense to get out of the scorching heat and into air conditioning.

It was one of those infamous, dreaded Sacramento days--temperature already in the 90s before noon and headed to 105. Sidewalks shimmering. Metal handrails too hot to touch. The Capitol steps like a skillet.

And the governor standing there frying on the east steps, looking directly into the sun, in a dark suit, occasionally dabbing the sweat off his brow and upper lip--having arrived to the blare of taped trumpets playing “Olympic Fanfare,” strutting past a giant Bear Flag draped sideways. Now surrounded by scores of legislators and invited guests, mostly schoolkids.

Just a bit hokey. Capitol steps, after all, are the hangouts of unknown candidates groveling for attention, straining for a hackneyed pic with a dome background--or of special interests with no inside access, trying to stage a photo-op “rally.” A governor already commands attention, has stature and owns a building with central air.

Worse than hokey, however, on this day it’s miserably hot outside. People are perspiring profusely as gubernatorial aides--to their credit--pass around bottled water and buckets of ice.

“It was like the Bataan death march,” Davis will comment later.

It lasts the better part of an hour--the fanfare, the speech, the signing, the Q&A; with reporters.

Then the Democratic governor spots some kids from a church camp under an old elm and graciously walks over to pose in a group photo. You just wanted to get in the shade, I tell him.

“I’m telling you!” Davis responds, smiling. “I asked my staff, ‘Why are we doing this out in the sun? First of all, it’s 105 degrees. Second, I’ve got gray hair. [On TV] it washes me out in the sun.’ ”

*

What is this all about? I ask the governor’s communications director, Phil Trounstine. He grins and silently points to a row of 10 TV cameras. That’s what it’s about: attracting TV by providing a shot that’s more compelling--according to conventional wisdom--than somebody standing inside behind a podium, in front of two flags.

It’s hoped this will have the aura of a Rose Garden event, even if it is on parched pavement.

“We think this [budget signing] is important, and we want to draw greater attention to [the governor’s] accomplishments,” Trounstine says. “We couldn’t control the weather.”

Such gimmickry is fully endorsed by Sean Walsh, who was Trounstine’s counterpart for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “For Davis, it works,” Walsh tells me by telephone. “He’s running a government that is operating efficiently. And what better symbol of government than the Capitol dome. I give Phil a pat on the fanny. . . .

“But the truth of the matter is, you’ve got to decide whether your TV looks good enough for the 105-degree temperature.”

It doesn’t, according to one veteran cameraman for the local CBS-TV affiliate, KOVR.

“This is horrible,” complains Mike Duncan. “All the walking back and forth by guards and dignitaries is very distracting. . . . And I don’t know that a governor needs to come out and literally wipe sweat off his brow between sound bites.

“All of us complained. We wanted it on the north steps in the shade--not just because of the shade, but because the lighting’s so much better there. But we were told, ‘Those aren’t the governor’s steps. These are the governor’s steps.’ ”

The east steps are outside the governor’s office.

“Inside is much better for all of us,” Duncan adds. “But there, they can’t play that whoopee music. I’ve been here 25 years, and I’ve never heard music played for a budget signing.”

Nor seen a budget signed outside.

*

All the razzle-dazzle and sizzle distracted from the governor’s main message.

For the first time in six years--and only the second time in 13--a state budget has been signed by the deadline. And Davis deserves much credit for that feat.

It’s a centrist $81.3-billion budget that doesn’t open up the treasury to a lot of new liberal spending, despite a whopping surplus.

It focuses on the public’s top priority, K-12 schools. But Davis not only is providing more money--$2.3-billion--he’s making the schools accountable.

With a message like that, a governor doesn’t need to act like a mad dog to get attention.