By John Brummett

They’re saying Mike Beebe may be the best governor in the country. They’re saying he may be the best ever for Arkansas.

You’re wanting to know who is saying such things.

That Beebe may be the best governor in the 50 states is a pronouncement in the cover story of the new issue of Governing magazine. That is a publication widely read and highly regarded in its field, which is nationwide coverage of state and local governments.

That Beebe may be the best governor ever for Arkansas was a quoted comment in this article. It was attributed to the man merely considered that very thing. That would be Dale Bumpers, who got voted the state’s best governor by Arkansas historians a few years ago.

The article recounts the usual — that Beebe has cut grocery sales taxes and kept state government’s treasury flush while getting the long-running public school case closed and raising taxes on cigarettes and severance of natural gas for new health programs and highways. It credits him with attracting job growth to the state.

It mentions the obvious: He’s done all this while the rest of the country and most states have been flat broke and in retrenchment modes.

The article properly cites Beebe’s good fortune in leading a legislature overwhelmingly of his party that is term-limited and thus pliable by partisan affiliation and a lack of experience and expertise. And it cites his leading a state far less mired in the economic disaster than much of the rest of the country.

It explains that he succeeds in part because of natural skills, including those that helped him set records for wrongful death damage awards as a young plaintiff’s lawyer in Searcy three decades ago. But mostly it credits his mastery of state government acquired through two decades as a leading state senator and four years as attorney general.

Beebe’s cautious pragmatism merits a few paragraphs, including a worthy anecdote. Former state Sen. Jim Argue of Little Rock, a liberal ideologue, recounts pressing Beebe when they were state Senate colleagues to burst through his cautious pragmatism just once and let loose his mildly left-of-center instincts. It had something to do with Medicaid funding. For once, Beebe relented and went Argue’s way.

They didn’t pass whatever it was.

Finally, the article credits Beebe’s solid performance to the fact that, at 62, he is in the job he always wanted and is not beset by the standard gubernatorial affliction of desire for higher office.

Consider this, just for fun: It was about this very point in Bumpers’ four-year governorship that he announced he would not seek re-election but run for the U.S. Senate instead. The reason, other than simple ambition and a desire to serve, was this: He figured the incumbent of his own party, J. William Fulbright, would lose to a Republican.

Imagine Beebe’s doing that today, announcing that he would run not for re-election, but for the U. S. Senate, and imagine him doing so because the incumbent of his own party, Blanche Lincoln, looks anemic in the polls.

Lincoln, Dustin McDaniel and Bill Halter would collide — she in frightened flight from a race she’d almost assuredly lose and the two men in frantic pursuit of the vacancy Beebe would be creating.

It’s not going to happen, of course. Beebe doesn’t want it. Party primaries aren’t wide-open anymore. Incumbents hardly ever get challenged by giants of their own party. That’s because fund-raising is centralized in the national party. Incumbents get right of first refusal, challengers are discouraged and nominees are dictated from Washington.

One more point: The article does not specifically explain that Beebe stepped into the governor’s office with a billion dollar surplus that Mike Huckabee left for him by miserly budgeting in more prosperous times.

It’s better to be lucky than good. It’s really swell to be both.

Oh, and this: This cover-boy business is going to test Beebe’s humility, which has never been all that sound.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.