Former Gov. Mike Parson leaves Monday’s inauguration ceremony following his introduction (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
When I think about Mike Parson’s tenure Missouri governor, which came to an end Monday after six years, two moments jump out to me.
The first came at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Parson steadfastly refused to issue stringent statewide public health orders, instead leaving those decisions in the hands of local officials. He drew blowback from his fellow Republicans who wanted him to rein in local governments and from the medical community who wanted a more robust state response.
So one Saturday in March 2020, a visibly frustrated Parson held a live streamed press briefing to declare that the people who “do nothing but criticize others, you don’t need to listen anymore to this briefing today.”
Then recited a portion of Theadore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” — a peculiar habit Parson would repeat periodically over the years whenever he felt besieged.
Two weeks later, he bowed to pressure and issued a stay-at-home order that didn’t really order anyone to stay home.
The other moment came nearly two years later, when a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch alerted the state that Social Security numbers of school teachers and administrators were vulnerable to public exposure due to flaws on a website maintained by the state department of education.
Records would show that officials within the Parson administration wanted to publicly praise the reporter, who held off publishing a story until the problem could be fixed. But instead of praise, Parson once again marched angrily out of his office to the assembled media, this time to call the reporter a “hacker” and demand he face criminal charges.
Even after the “hacker” claim was debunked and the local prosecutor found no laws were broken, Parson continued to portray the reporter as a criminal who was only trying to embarrass him with the disclosure of the security flaw.
Why do I find these moments so compelling?
Because they say something profound about a guy who, even those close to him privately admit, seemed to love the pomp and circumstance of being governor and recoil from the hard parts of the job.
He never really got his hands dirty in the legislative process, largely leaving the particulars of state policy up to lawmakers and ensuring he always played a peripheral role in his administration’s biggest accomplishments. But he’d lash out at legislators who questioned him and veto their priorities with little or no explanation.
A lifelong Chiefs fan, he would revel in the opportunity to travel to Super Bowls or rub elbows with the team. But he simmered with resentment when his use of private planes supplied by donors and special interests came under scrutiny.
He preached social distancing, masks and staying at home during the pandemic. But when a COVID outbreak forced the Missouri House to cancel plans for the chamber to host his State of the State address, Parson publicly growled that the move was made out of personal malice, not public health.
Parson came to office promising a break from the tumultuous 18-month tenure of his scandal-plagued predecessor, Eric Grietens. And in many ways he lived up to that promise.
But other than platitudes about infrastructure and workforce development, Parson’s time in office could best be described as a caretaker administration with occasional flashes of performative victimhood.
In those moments when he was forced to choose between confronting a problem or confronting the messenger, the governor who vowed to turn the page on an ugly chapter in Missouri political history couldn’t hide his disdain for having to suffer through the tough parts of the gig.
A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Saturday edition of The Daily Independent, a free morning newsletter that arrives in your inbox every day at 6 a.m. with exclusive content and a roundup of the biggest stories in Missouri. Sign up today.