I can’t say that I’m a great admirer of Charlie Crist. Indeed, I once went so far as to call him America’s worst governor, and there’s stiff competition for that title. I’ve also argued that Democrats would be mad to embrace him as one of their own. This week, we’ve seen some pretty strong vindication of this view.

As Susan Davis reports in the Wall Street Journal, Crist seems to have kicked off an independent campaign for the U.S. Senate by vetoing legislation that promised to pare back unsustainable public sector pay increases.

The governor’s decision to veto the bill drew a stark line between his administration and the Republican establishment. It earned plaudits from teachers unions, which opposed the education bill.
The legislation—one of the most sweeping bills of its kind in the nation—would have eliminated tenure for new teachers and required merit-pay plans linking salaries to student learning progress. Unions opposed the measure, saying it would make it harder for Florida to hire good teachers, and that it violated collective bargaining rights.
The governor, who once supported the bill, denied the veto was tied to his plans for the Senate race. He said he opposed the bill following an outcry of opposition from teachers, parents and local school officials, according to the Associated Press.

Indeed. Please keep in mind that conservative legislators took a considerable risk by voting for this legislation, as the NEA is a very powerful force in Florida politics as it in states across the country. Crist has instantly gained tens of thousands of foot-soldiers for a general election campaign. The bill was far from perfect, as Rick Hess notes. But it nevertheless would have been an effective lever to raise the productivity of Florida’s educational workforce and reduce the spending burden on taxpayers. Rick Hess has a smart take:

The big news yesterday was Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s decision to veto Senate Bill 6. While Sherman Dorn and other commenters on my Tuesday postfairly flagged reasonable concerns about the test-fueled rigidity of this ambitious but unfortunately heavy-handed legislation, I thought the bill a crucial opportunity to start reimagining teacher tenure and pay. The right move was for Crist to sign it, with the understanding that the legislature would take the next year or two to address some of the concerns about the single-minded focus on test results, reliability, validity, sample size, and test construction.

But that would involve Crist making the right move, which is all but unimaginable.

One gets the impression that Crist’s independent candidacy would be based on a simple idea: There Is Such A Thing As A Free Lunch, or TISATAAFL. His central political belief is that we should cut taxes and increase spending. How, you ask? By “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.” Given that there isn’t enough waste, fraud, and abuse to finance the massive expansions of public spending he supports, and given that eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse will involve increasing administrative expenditures regardless, I’d like to see how the governor intends to square the circle.

Voters, by the way, might buy it. Consider that the next time you ponder how we managed to get in this extraordinary fiscal mess.