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Why do I say that?
Because DeWine is a governor who really wants to make government function better, work for the common good and actually achieve modest progress.
This can be done by looking at reality, at evidence and at assumptions.
The thing is, DeWine has the knowledge and the wherewithal, and maybe the self-confidence and calm to do it.
He has been in politics for the better part of half a century and has been and done everything. He has been a prosecutor, a state senator, a congressman, a lieutenant governor, a United States senator, attorney general of the state and now governor. He knows two great things: How to make the moves. And who he is.
It helps that he is an obviously decent, likable and approachable guy — quintessentially Ohioan. He grew up in a small Ohio town and still lives in one today.
DeWine would like a second term as governor to cap his career. That is no secret and he admitted as much in an interview with this writer and Toledo Blade Columbus bureau chief Jim Provance earlier this month. But fighting the pandemic has become his greatest duty and his obsession. And he will do that duty without fear or favor.
What he calls the third wave of COVID-19 shows no signs of leveling off, and his job, as he sees it, is to find a way to contain the virus and to make sure it does not get worse and destroy thousands more lives, along with Ohio's economy.
The far right sees DeWine, a lifelong Republican, as too activist in addressing the disease — authoritarian even. Fringe people in the legislature have threatened impeachment. Militant yahoos have threatened worse. Some Trump loyalists have vowed to primary him.
The governor shrugs. "I have generally had primaries," he says. No big deal.
What matters most to him right now is that we are in a pandemic and government has a role to play.
Some 7,777 Ohioans have died of COVID-19, as of two weeks ago. A total of 584,766 have contracted the disease and 33,375 have been hospitalized.
DeWine adds that fully one-third of all the people in the intensive care unit in the state of Ohio currently are there because they have COVID-19.
DeWine says that the leader of a state has to be able to pivot. What he did in March will not necessarily work now. But COVID-19 cases are rising in every Ohio town and city and are overwhelming in many counties.
So, the governor and his staff wrack their brains every day, asking themselves: What can we do now? What can we do that will be effective?
DeWine thinks a key answer is messaging. People need to know what the risks are and what their own best practices are.
So, he is preparing a major media buy for a public information commercial in which nurses talk directly to the camera. "Those are the people the state needs to hear from, not Mike DeWine."
But his own message is pretty powerful. To begin with: "Don't eat with someone who does not live in your house."
He says most of the spread of the disease today is not because of noncompliance but association that is ancillary to an activity that occurred with compliance. For instance, a cheerleading team practices with distance and masks, but then the team goes out for pizza. And maybe it travels to the pizza parlor together in a car, everyone unmasked.
Or, three guys get together in a basement rec room on a Sunday to watch football and drink beer. A good activity, DeWine says, but a good way to spread COVID-19.
Maybe the first man is the host. The second his brother-in-law. The third a neighbor. This is what's so tough, says the governor; we have to train people to do the opposite of what is natural human behavior. The threat is not from the stranger but the relative and friend. Not from the unknown but the known.
DeWine was dubbed the anti-Trump for seeing the disease for what it was from the start, going after it, and for placing medical professionals and scientists before the public and in front of himself. He believes that you unite the public in the fight by telling them the truth and trusting them. And he says fighting a pandemic should have absolutely nothing to do with politics.
But Mike DeWine is also the anti-2020 politician, because of his total, and totally humane pragmatism. "I have learned," he says, "that improving on the status quo is always better … if you wait for the perfect, you wait forever."
It is never about the posture, with him, always the result. Hence, he hopes Dr. Anthony Fauci is correct that there will be significant herd immunity by the spring, but he rather doubts it. DeWine hopes for two or three more vaccines. The more lines out there, the more hope.
Hope is a big part of leadership, in DeWine's view. So is information: Give the people information.
Here is the DeWine way to govern: Dig in to the problem. Get with experts who understand the problem, by virtue of experience, scholarship, or both, and come up with a plan to move the status quo.
It's not rocket science. It is craft.
It is basically how governors like Nelson Rockefeller, James Rhodes and Richard Thornburgh did it back in the day.
But it comes as a breath of fresh air.
DeWine is the anti-posture anti-demagoging politician. The antidote to the tribalists.
So, Mike DeWine is not a centrist or a moderate but an empiricist. What works? What advances the ball? What saves lives?
In today's politics that's a rare profile in sense and courage.
But it used to be called good government. Or, simply, government.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Keith C. Burris
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(TNS)
Previously:
• 12/09/20: Empathy as patriotism
• 11/18/20: Maybe we know what we want
• 11/10/20: Resolved: The nation is just not into woke
• 10/16/20: Many years in this racket, I'm convinced I've learned how the press covers and the public perceives national leaders is that we usually test for the wrong qualities
• 09/23/20: Issues anyone?
• 08/21/20: Believing in the country
• 08/13/20: Shells full of nuts
• 06/03/20: The fabric is fraying: Redemption is becoming a thing of the past
• 05/20/20: Treasure of the West: Recklessness and ignorance has imperiled due process in America
• 01/20/20: Joe McCarthy won the Dem debate
Keith C. Burris is executive editor of the Post-Gazette, and vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers.