OVER the weekend, I saw the new Will Ferrell movie, “The Campaign.” This movie is a very strong “R” but has some interesting views of politics. A number of inside jokes can be seen ranging from why we should mistrust electronic voting machines to the role of big business in politics. It is also important for candidates to avoid punching babies. If these two candidates were real, they might actually get elected. That’s the scary part.

We are less than three weeks out from the primary elections and the only common question is how many write-in votes will former Gov. Gutierrez get for Public Auditor. This will allow him to proceed to the general election ballot. The only other minor question is whether the delegate’s race will have two or three candidates. Other than this, we have a very boring, low-energy primary.

Political leadership on Guam is a topic to which we devote a lot of time. In general, there are very few public leaders on Guam. For the most part, many office holders and appointees sort of fake their way through the motions of office and simply hand over the inactions of their efforts to the next generation of leaders. The problem with leading on Guam is that no one wants to follow the law, save the government money, or develop plans to address issues on the horizon. I believe part of this behavior is an effect of Guam’s weather. On Guam, we have no seasons, so it feels like the same day everyday. This creates a likely mindset that important decisions can be put off until tomorrow. The other weather point is the role of serious storms or typhoons that hit Guam. When these storms hit, all of our planning can go out the window.

The legal factor is also an important reason our leaders do not lead. Rather than manage effectively and efficiently, many leaders would rather use their limited budgets to pay legal fees. As I have said before, this allows some agencies to delay following the law and then later claim that the issue at hand was in dispute. To his credit, Gov. Gutierrez openly ended this practice in a number of cases. To his credit, Gov. Calvo has also effectively looked to management solutions rather than engaging in blame shifting. The amount of time and energy Guam expends on legalistic policy disputes is incredible. We should calculate how much the government spends every year on these actions and then simply work with the Judiciary and hire a number of administrative referees to handle issues deliberately as they arise. Instead, we logjam the courts and live with ineffective agencies. It is as if every management problem is translated into an expensive legal problem.

It is nice that Guam has a Public Auditor to tell us that the government failed in the past year or two. We are really good at describing these failures. What the government really needs is to view the Public Auditor role beyond the simple financial management aspects of the position. Most of the financial management is simply contracted out. A key potential part of the OPA is program evaluation. This helps leaders to see how well a given program operates and allows for program improvement.

In this role, the Public Auditor would work also as a sort of inspector general. Broadening the office to fit this role might be explored in the future. Since our Legislature is elected in a single district election, few candidates really concentrate on anything other than trying to get voters to like them.