Tell It, Schweitzer - then get it done.

Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is not afraid. His comments on the roadless rule via Courtney Lowery at New West:

“They’ve given me a broke-down baler and a vice-grip and told me to bale hay,” Schweitzer told New West Tuesday afternoon...

"I get the responsibility, but not the authority," he said.

This whole thing, Schweitzer said, is a trend with the Bush Administration – turning over burdens to governors with no money to match.

“It’s just another unfunded mandate. ‘They say ‘you’re responsible but we’re not helping and we’re taking away your assets,’” he said. “This is an administration that has it all backward. Remember Truman? … This administration says ‘by the way, I’m passing the buck to you.”

Cases in point: Amtrak reform, roadless area, national security (Schweitzer points out that as the administration tells states they have to do their own homeland security and natural disaster relief, it simultaneously takes away the National Guardsmen and women and the aircraft the state uses to battle forest fires, an issue that has had the Governor hot under the collar more than once.)

He’s happy to have local control, but Schweitzer says the federal government is forgetting that states can’t just print up more money when someone has a new idea like the administration can in D.C.

“I have to deal with real dollars, real people, real problems and come up with real products,” he said.

As posted over at FrontierPAC, I like his pull-no-punches rhetoric.

He can, however, do one better: get it done.

Be, in this case, the better man, and actually exercise state control over the process. Communicate the hell out of how the Governor (or his office) is actually meeting with county officials and more importantly area residents to get their input on how to manage these forest lands. Schweitzer would then have an unprecedented upper hand in showing how states can manage themselves, their resources, and their own cultures. If (however unlikely) the USFS rejected his petition, the stink over "federal intrusiveness" and downright hyprocrisy would make Schweitzer a hero.

You can't buy that kind of mythos with 30-second spots.