In 2015, incoming Congressman Alex Mooney appointed retired Charleston businessman Fred Joseph as his District Director and myself as Eastern Panhandle Regional Director.
From Mr. Joseph, I learned a valuable piece of wisdom about government and politics. He said “Good government starts with water and ‘excrement.’” Now the retired Marine used an earthier term than excrement, but most readers will get the gist.
Mr. Joseph’s point was that most people depend most fundamentally on having systems in place that efficiently deliver water to a residence or business and also take human and other forms of waste away. His broader ideal lay in the fact that a hierarchy of needs exists in the public, both individually and collectively, and that government needs to get the fundamentals right before anything else.
As long as he served in that role, he went faithfully to municipal and county government meetings, public service districts, and elsewhere to track down problems and to make sure they were aware of how the Congressional office could help. After learning from a West Virginia University expert that “straight pipes” (direct piping of human and other waste from a structure to a nearby stream) are the Mountain State’s most serious pollution problem, Mr. Joseph made it a personal crusade to ensure that households in the Second Congressional District with that problem, almost always economically disadvantaged, understood where they could get help to remedy it.
In 1943, the eminent American psychologist Abraham Maslow crafted a visual representation of a “Hierarchy of Needs.” It lists a series of human needs from the most fundamental and important at the base to the least fundamental at the summit.
As an article on him from the School of Philosophy and Economic Science states in a biographical article on him:
“He originally proposed that the lower needs must be met in order to pursue the higher needs but he later suggested that some people could pursue higher needs before the lower ones were met, for example, creative people may find themselves pursuing higher needs even if the lower needs were unmet, and also people dedicated to pursuing higher ideals could achieve self-actualization even if circumstances prevented them from fulfilling their lower needs.”
The pyramid’s hierarchy starts with physiological needs, then lists in order of importance safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The first four represent “deficiency needs” while the last serves as a “growth need.”
Good government must run by the same philosophy, that the needs of the people have a hierarchy of priorities. Government must lead with the most fundamental prioritized needs in action and should lead with them in messaging.
Different people may have different ideas on where different elements should rank on the hierarchy, but whatever order they come in, a list of priorities helps to guide the government’s limited resources of time and money into the most effective directions. Here is a suggestion for elected officials at any level.
First comes Mr. Joseph’s water and excrement. He made a point to visit the wastewater treatment plant built in Old Fields, learning about the modern filtering systems used there. Plant officials boasted that, once filtered, the wastewater returning to the South Branch was cleaner than the water in the river itself.
Many West Virginia communities rely on water and sewer infrastructure that, at least in part, dates back to the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration or before – meaning much of the networks of pipes date back 90 years or more. No community can accomplish anything without reliable water and sewer.
Next in order should be roads, then fire, EMS, and law enforcement. The closure of a number of volunteer fire and EMS departments in the past several years serve as canaries in the coal mine that State officials seem mysteriously quiet in addressing.
After that public schools, agriculture, economic development, higher education, and cultural edification. Certainly many will have ideas on what else should go where, but the point is that having a guideline is key.
Governor Patrick Morrisey made a point in his first few months in office of highlighting a number of legislative and executive accomplishments that satisfied the political base, but left others confused.
There is something to be said for passing legislation that bans bad things like ranked choice voting or DEI related anything. While not much of that was present to begin with, the idea that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to lawmaking as much as anything else. Leading off with them in action and messaging, however, left many wondering about priorities.
Frankly, Governor Morrisey serves in a hostile work environment. Almost all of the state’s media has hostility to him on an ideological and political basis. He also must contend with the prejudice of many west of Canaan Valley against leaders who come from the east of it.
Morrisey will get less than zero “breaks” in coverage and, as a result, needs to have the tightest focus on both action and messaging. The Governor, much like Arch Moore before him, will never win the affection, much less the approval, of most media outlets covering him, but can earn the respect of the people and their local leaders if he remains attuned to their fundamental needs even as he addresses the rest of his agenda.
On a lighter note, congratulations to the Governor and his family on the impending arrival of their grandchild! Regardless of anyone’s personal politics, this is a blessed gift from God to be celebrated.
