Gov. Guinn Should Resign

By W.W. Anderson

Governor Kenny Guinn should step down.

His mental deterioration—long an open secret among Las Vegas insiders—is now so pronounced as to seriously interfere with the public performance of his official duties.

This was obvious to hundreds of people in Las Vegas last Wednesday when the governor “spoke” to us (this writer was a guest) at the annual meeting of the Nevada Taxpayers Association.

The word spoke gets quotation marks above because really what happened was that the large audience, for a prolonged period, was subjected to an angry, incoherent jumble of rambling assertions—most of which never even reached the stage of fully formed arguments or thoughts.

In the words of one businessman, interviewed by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Erin Neff as he was leaving, to be in Guinn’s audience was a “punishing” experience. Steven Miller, policy director for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, observed that many in the audience appeared from their behavior—hands over their eyes, looking down—to be embarrassed for the governor. Assemblyman Bob Beers, according to Neff, “shook his head when asked what he thought of Guinn's speech,” and chose to comment instead on the remarks of an earlier speaker, a representative of the California Taxpayers Association.

The fact is, Guinn’s performance was public proof of what numerous individuals around the state have been reporting for some time: that Mr. Guinn has undergone significant and serious mental deterioration in the last two years and can no longer spontaneously manage a logical train of communication that extends beyond a sentence or two.

Unfortunately for Nevada and tragically for Mr. Guinn, this syndrome of rambling incoherence and unprompted anger is well known to doctors of geratology: It is the cognitive impairment that doctors refer to—when it persists more than a few months—as dementia.

In practice, the actual causes of the syndrome appear to vary, says Dr Sebastian Fairweather, senior lecturer at the University of Oxford Department of Clinical Geratology in Oxford, England. Some drugs produce the syndrome on a either temporary or permanent basis, as does a vitamin B12 deficiency. But “by far the commonest causes in old age are Alzheimer’s (50%), multi-infarct dementia (17%) or a mixture of the two.”

Part of the dementia syndrome, says Fairweather, is a situation “in which it may be difficult to say whether the patient just ‘cannot be bothered’ to think, or cannot think.”

Which was exactly what the large audience of witnesses observed at the Wednesday NTA luncheon.

Review-Journal reporter Neff—of any major media reporter—has provided by far the best account of what occurred and the subsequent audience reaction [See the link on Electric Nevada’s front page – editor].

What is almost as interesting, however, is the decision by other news organizations in attendance at the NTA luncheon to NOT report its major story. Ky Plaskon, of KNPR public radio in Las Vegas, was there, but subsequently only aired a boring snoozer of a report that carefully avoided the big story. The same with Kirsten Searer, of the Las Vegas Sun.

Perhaps age and ignorance led both of them to miss the significance of what they witnessed.

That can’t be said, however, of Jon Ralston, who could be seen sitting right down front during the luncheon, occasionally scribbling notes. Once upon a time, many years ago, Ralston was known as one of the Vegas Valley’s best newsmen. In recent years, however, after selling out to the Greenspin empire, Ralston has become best known as a purveyor of journalistic outcall services for the most corrupt elements of Las Vegas power.

Nevertheless, a spark of Ralston’s old bygone integrity flashed out, instinctively, when Guinn—amidst everything else erratic—interrupted his confused and disjointed remarks to confusedly query the columnist about how he, the governor, was doing.

“You’re not making sense,” instantly shot back Ralston.

Subscribers to Ralston’s expensive Flash e-mail bulletin say that the columnist has not yet deigned to share with them that chronic fact about the chief executive of the State of Nevada.