The year was 1976 and the country was still feeling the effects of a scandal in the Nixon administration.  A relatively unknown and inexperienced candidate emerged to run for President, campaigning on change and bringing a new energy to Washington.  Now… where… have we heard that before?  Anyway, Jimmy Carter won a narrow victory for President, as Gerald Ford could not shake the stigma of Watergate.

As President elect Carter stood waiving and blinding the masses with his brilliant tooth grin, the engines of his mind clanked and clunked untethered inside the empty cavern of his skull.  Thought of the future of his administration confronted the grinning executive, but undaunted, Jimmy just kept grinning.  The President-elect faced huge tasks, seemingly insurmountable.  Inflation was only at 5% and the economy was growing moderately.  Who could he find that could help drive inflation into the double digits and completely squash economic growth? Ah, there was such a man.  As the newly elected leader of the free world (not Brussels, Joe) gazed out across the countryside, the reflection of his brilliant teeth blazing a charred swath in the greenery in front of him, he noticed citizens driving to and from neighborhood filling stations unchecked without any apparent obstacles.  Who could the gaping newest resident of the White House find that could help him create long lines for those gas stations, backing them up for miles along the roads?  Yes, there was a man available.

President Carter needed a special someone to give him what every Democrat leader desperately hopes for when the nation teeters on the brink of disaster; someone to kick the thing over the cliff and create one big mess.  That knight of collective debacle, that champion of gross mismanagement was none other than the State of Maine’s very own Eliot Cutler.  It seems when you look deeper at the many policy failures of the Carter administration you find the guy behind the scenes helping to orchestrate this symphony of the discordant musicians or maybe it was the ballet clubfoot, but anyway, the guy was Eliot Mess, I mean, Cutler.

Eliot Mess, I mean, Cutler, I’m sorry did I do that again?  You know for the sake of my sanity… yes, I do… I do try and maintain my sanity, thank you very much!  For the sake of my sanity, lets just call him Eliot Mess, as his policies are the flaming epitome of all things liberal: one big pile of mess.

Eliot Mess was the primary architect of the Clean Water Act with Ed Muskie, which was right after, or sometime after he helped create a magazine which has always been the bastion of the Liberal thought process; National lampoon.  The Clean Water Act, as with many Liberal endeavors, was so ambiguous that it left many opportunities to further add more and more bureaucracies.  Until we have reached the point that the CWA website is advocating “holistic policies” for the cleaning of water.  Soon, they’ll want us all to gather ‘round the river, not to pray, but to hum.

Now, you might think this columnist is being a little harsh calling him that Mess name.  I know, I’m doing the “cobra” thing again.  Perhaps a list of the departments this man oversaw the policies for may help to explain the dubious moniker that has been affixed to said, Eliot Cutler.

Mr. Mess was the director of policy for the Department of Energy.  Yah, remember the long gas lines?  Wasn’t that crazy fun? That was Eliot Cutler.  Yup, I probably could stop right here… but… I won’t, ‘cause there is more.  He was the Director of Policy for the Department of Natural Resources.  You know, the whole “this land is our land”, but not really anymore because it’s government land to protect those natural resources from you horrible land owners that want to use your land for your own personal gain because you own it… thing.  I think that was a blatant run on sentence.  Oh, am I going to hear it from Professor Frary.  I haven’t even mentioned yet that he oversaw policy for the Environmental Protection Agency.  How has that little organization worked out for the State of Maine?  Can anyone say no business?  No jobs?

Much of the left-wing policy mandates that hamper the growth of our state were implemented nationally during the Carter administration and Eliot Mess Cutler was the overseer of those debacles.  He is wrapped in the failure of Liberalism.  He was there for every failure of the Carter administration. Eliot Mess will try to paint himself differently to the voters, but the glare of Jimmy Carter’s grin will shine through.