People are getting sick, some have died, businesses are closed down, kids can’t go to school, families are shut in their houses, afraid and bored and climbing the walls. Everybody is worried about basic survival stuff, and Honolulu’s mayor decided to roll out the bulldozers on his controversial pet project.
That could be the biggest gaffe of Caldwell’s gaffe-filled administration. Can’t say for sure, though. There’s still time for him to top it.
There are missteps that people forgive and forget, and those that are so convoluted that it’s hard to get worked up about it after enough time passes and campaign season rolls around again. Gaffes that are hard to sum up in a short phrase or require too much backstory to explain, or the ones that are achingly human and relatable, don’t tend to be fatal flaws.
But then there are those misdeeds — like this misdeed — that defy explanation, can’t be chalked up to “I’ve done that, too,” and can be described in a short sentence, like this: Caldwell sent out bulldozers to dig up an ancient burial ground when those who have opposed the project were locked down because of a pandemic. That’s memorable. That’s indelible.
Just about every day since the new coronavirus took over our lives, Caldwell has been hosting his own news briefings, parsing out exactly what you can and can’t do and where you can and can’t go on Oahu beaches, emphasizing that everyone needs to hunker down and focus on what really matters, peppering his scolding with, “We’re all in this together.”
To spew all of that hectoring and then send out a construction crew to dig up land that people have been insisting contains ancient burials is … I don’t even know the word. Some have called it sneaky. UH law school professor Ken Lawson called Caldwell crooked. Lt. Gov. Josh Green, Caldwell’s most feared competitor in his quest to be Hawaii’s next governor, called it “a really bad call.” It’s tone-deaf and irresponsible.
When he announced the resumption of construction, Caldwell said it was essential to keep county crews working. Uh, don’t they have storm drains to clear or park restrooms to clean? Another implausible explanation from the mayor, revealing his utter disdain for the public’s intelligence.
And then a bone from an ancient burial was found on the site, just like protesters kept saying would happen, and Caldwell was forced to backtrack. He didn’t apologize, though, or say that maybe his timing was off, and he used the squishy word “pause” to describe shutting down work on the project.
Calling out the bulldozers on Sherwoods during an islandwide lockdown may be one of the bigger missteps of the Caldwell years, but he still has a few months in office to stubbornly mess up even more. And who knows? He might outdo himself and — burials be damned, protester safety be damned, political career be damned — send the bulldozers out to Sherwoods again.
