Speaking of positive messaging, sometimes your chief executive has to turn on a dime from "Holy crap, run for your lives!" to "Sunshine! Rainbows! Walleye, waterskiing, and Wall Drug!"
Governor Dennis Daugaard shows how it's done. Watch this great video from South Dakota Tourism in which DD turns from emergency flood commander to South Dakota's number-one salesman:
And you know, I'm looking out from my porch at glistening Lake Herman, 91 degrees, hazy but not a cloud in the sky, and I'm thinking, for the most part, he's right: it's a great day to be in South Dakota.
Remember, out-of-state friends, Dennis's next budget depends on your sales tax dollars. So don't cancel that South Dakota vacation! Come camp at Lake Herman! Visit Prairie Village and Madville Times World Headquarters! And buy a lot of Bundy Burgers!
Update 17:48 CDT: South Dakota's next great tourist attraction: engineering a replica of Niagara Falls just a half-mile upstream from Mike Rounds's house. When the Army Corps of Engineers crank open the Oahe Dam---ah! a hundred thousand honeymooners all go "Ooooo!" and buy corndogs. Chaaa-ching!
Update 22:13 CDT: An eagle-eyed reader points out that the governor's shirt says, "Governor Mike Rounds." Good thing they slapped a really big logo with Dennis's name across the bottom of the screen, right, Bill? ;-)
How very Bush-oid.
It could be worse. The Governor could pull a weenie and insist that no flood exists. He could say that a media hack of unprecedented dimensions has taken place.
Gov. Daugaard is a class act. His shirt is embroidered with a Mike Rounds event, not as Mike Rounds. Love the video except for the part they have the state flag & national colors in the wrong place...
Stace, what's protocol: national colors always to our left, speaker's right?
glad those buget cuts are working....nice they can recycle shirts....unless Rounds for Governor in 2012?
"If basin runoff remains low in the spring, the corps plans to give the lake preference over Lake Sakakawea behind Garrison Dam when it comes to holding back water to aid fish spawning, Farhat said."
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/viewart/20121031/NEWS01/310310019