By David Shapiro

Wednesday, August 21, 1996

Richard Borreca is on vacation

A few weeks earlier, a top political reporter here in the 1970s said, "I think Ben Cayetano is our best governor since John Burns."

The tributes to Burns, the father of Hawaii's Democratic Party and governor from 1962 to 1974, didn't surprise me. Where they came from did.

In the Democratic holy war between Burns and Thomas Gill in 1970, the university was the heart of Gill country. Many of the political reporters of the time also were sympathetic to the more progressive Gill.

That Burns is now held in such high regard even by many of his former detractors is testament to his greatness as a political leader. It also says something about what today's leaders are missing.

Burns was a confounding man who spoke in riddles. But he brought qualities to office we haven't seen since:

He became governor after a lifetime of achievement. Joining with returning Japanese-American servicemen after World War II, he built the Democratic Party and engineered its takeover of the Legislature in 1954. Then, as territorial delegate to Congress, he succeeded where many had failed and won statehood for Hawaii. He would be remembered as a great man if he were never governor.

Successors George Ariyoshi, John Waihee and Ben Cayetano were young lawyers who became young legislators who became lieutenant governors who became governors without turning many heads along the way. Burns was a cop who went into politics to fulfill a mission. His successors went into politics to pursue careers as politicians.

However ineloquent he may have been, Burns had a clear vision for Hawaii that everybody understood. He believed in social and economic equality. He sought to achieve it through economic growth that would provide opportunity and pay for quality public education to prepare local people to take advantage of the economic opportunities.

What vision was the last election about? Cayetano argued that he wasn't the same old kind of Democrat while Pat Saiki and Frank Fasi countered that they weren't Democrats at all. Hardly the heady debate about Hawaii's future that Burns and Gill put on.

Burns understood how to use power to force consensus. He was The Man. Political and business life revolved around him. The government got things done.

NONE of his successors have enjoyed such stature. Ariyoshi ran a tight fiscal ship, but did little else to distinguish himself. Waihee achieved gains for native Hawaiians, but bloated the state bureaucracy and lost control of some of his greedier friends.

Cayetano has it in him to be a fine leader. But he is a victim of his times, stuck with a budget crisis that forces him to fix his predecessor's blunders before he can focus on a vision for the future. It may be his fate to be the guy who plugs the holes in the ship of state so the next governor can sail it.

To restore real leadership, we need to stop the law school to Legislature to lieutenant governor to governor gravy train. Those are unlikely places to find quality leaders. We need to demand evidence of real accomplishment in the real world. We need to bring substance back to the political debate.