The governor’s annual State of the State address is one of those opportunities to sink or swim. By most accounts, in his third time in the water, Gov. David Ige managed to float along, his flailing, inelegant delivery buoyed by a well-written speech.
Ige had to work hard to keep his head above the rip currents for this one. This was not a friendly crowd.
Ige was speaking before a legislative body that is out to get him and is well armed against weakly constructed budget requests submitted from the governor’s various department heads. Add to that anger over things such as the way the Maui hospital privatization went down, the mysterious dumping of the highly rated DOE superintendent, and the “Cool the Schools” plan, which ended up being mostly hot air. Tough crowd.
Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui had a stone-faced expression that rivaled that of Michelle Obama at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a “Tsuts is not impressed” look. Ige had to follow two tough opening acts, including House Speaker Joe Souki’s painful recitation of the opening formalities. (Couldn’t Souki get a pinch hitter for that? C’mon!) Before Souki, bank executive and community leader Corbett Kalama opened the session with a heartfelt, dignified blessing in two languages. You could almost see the thought bubbles hatching over people’s heads all through the Senate chamber: “Kalama for Governor 2018! That’s it!”
But about the speech …
OK, the Ginaca machine as metaphor has been done before, but not recently, so points for bringing back a classic.
Ige talked about the Ginaca machine to illustrate Hawaii’s track record of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. (Few people can pronounce the word “entrepreneurial” in a way that doesn’t make the audience flinch. Ige is not one of them.)
“The Ginaca machines … could peel and core a pineapple in seconds. That technology allowed Hawaii to completely dominate global markets and transformed the industry. We did not wait for someone to show us how to grow and harvest sugar and pineapple better. We did it ourselves by being innovative and entrepreneurial.”
Except the guy who invented the machine was from San Francisco. Henry Ginaca came to Hawaii for a few years, where he started to design the machine that would carry his name, but he didn’t finish it until he moved back to the mainland.
But yes, the machine that revolutionized agriculture in Hawaii by rapidly turning pokey-skinned, caustic-juiced pineapples into pretty yellow rings ready for canning (while eliminating scores of jobs) does serve as a fine reminder of so much of Hawaii’s economy: the way hotels are turning into condos, thus eliminating housekeeping jobs; the way Hawaii is packaged and sold to the masses as though canned; the way rail is being built faster than it can be planned; the way idealistic politicians get chewed up by the process and spit out, skinned and hollow, on the other end.
Ige’s vision of Hawaii is hopeful, the vision of an engineer who likes making plans. The challenge for him is actually building the contraption and making it work without tearing anybody’s arm off. The challenge for his audience is that Ige has not always said what he meant and meant what he said.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
