Written by Robert Douglas   

Maybe Florida should change the slogan on its license plate from the “Sunshine State” to the “State of Denial” and elect Rick Scott as governor.

He would not get my vote, to be sure.

But any candidate running a simplistic, government-on-the-cheap campaign surely would bring a Disney–like air of fantasy to the Governor’s Mansion that would delight those who would prefer not to confront the realities of a state that is broke – and broken in so many ways.

Never mind that Scott is financing his campaign with a personal fortune built -- at least in part – from stolen tax money earmarked for Florida’s least advantaged residents.

Or that he denies having anything to do with the colossal Medicare fraud for which the healthcare company he ran was fined $1.7 billion.

While the denial may be implausible to skeptics, maybe it’s true. Maybe he, as the boss, was away that day. Or maybe he’s just hearing impaired.

“Rick Scott did not want to hear bad news,” according to a former subordinate who was quoted in a Tallahassee Democrat article September 5.

Whatever the explanation, Scott is the poster boy for those in positions of responsibility who shirk accountability without suffering any apparent pangs of guilt or feeling obliged to pay a consequence commensurate with what it cost those who entrusted them to be good stewards.

The question is: Is such a poster boy the kind of governor we should entrust to lead a political enterprise that has yet to put “State of Denial” on its license plate?

I’ll give him this much: The CEO of a complex healthcare corporation should be able to get away with saying, “ I don’t know nothing about birthin’ babies.”

But isn’t such a CEO paid the big bucks to assure his stockholders that those in the hospital’s delivery room know what the heck they are doing?

Just as a board chosen for their varying strengths of experience to oversee a quasi-public research facility such as Research Park should have picked up sooner on the fact that an employee had been embezzling the organization for years – especially when she was hired with a public record showing she was guilty of similar behavior at her previous employer?

Or the city fathers of a community such as Midway should have been aware of some impropriety before some disgruntled employees blew the whistle on the interim fire chief for having been arrested in the past for arson and put on probation after pleading guilty to a lesser charge?

Ironically, accountability is the cornerstone of Scott’s campaign. “We need a conservative outsider to hold government accountable,” his website says. “As governor, I’ll require accountability budgeting to force the bureaucrats in Tallahassee to justify every tax dollar they spend.”

But, alas, accountability has become little more than a rhetorical device that politicians of every ilk like to use when campaigning but seldom exercise when in power.

Candidate Obama, for example, spoke out against the Iraq war. But once in power, he opted to look ahead to the future rather than back at past actions of the Bush administration and hold it accountable for what some critics argue may have been war crimes.

And as for the financial crisis, rooted in the questionable -- if not illegal -- behavior of Wall Street bankers, taxpayers bankrolled a colossal bailout while some of the perpetrators of the crisis have walked off with handsome bonuses when they should have been prosecuted.

Where’s the accountability here?

If I thought for a minute Scott would “get to work” stamping out Florida’s malfeasance and holding those responsible for it truly accountable, I’d be inclined to take him more seriously than I do.

But until he fesses up to his own role in stealing from Medicaid, I can’t see him as anything more than a charlatan with enough money to Photoshop his image to erase blemishes that disqualify him from being the political leader of America’s fourth most populous state.

But of course I’m not naïve enough to think that will happen.

Many potential voters have opted out of the political process altogether, leaving enough willing if not eager to look past the deficiencies of candidate Scott because this election would serve their self-interest. The integrity and well being of Florida as the community of many be damned.

As always, it’s all about money and power.

Some bookkeeper who pilfers money to buy things such as vehicles for her family and a bit of plastic surgery for herself will go to jail -- as she should.

But a multimillionaire, who makes more in a year than she embezzled in several, runs a company caught stealing taxpayers’ money that may be helping feed a campaign to buy him the state’s top elected office.

Such is life in the Sunshine State. Where denial is always the currency of the realm.