Sam Brownback wanted to be president once. That didn’t work out so well.
So he became the governor of Kansas instead. And let’s be honest here: That didn’t really work out great either.
He cut taxes, Sunflower State schools struggled with growing class sizes as funding declined, angry voters rebelled and Brownback ended up leaving the state before his term ended, off to serve as an “ambassador-at-large” for religious freedom during the first Trump administration.
These days, he serves mostly as a cautionary tale.
Now, though, we’re getting a look at what a Brownback presidency might have looked like.
As the president hit 100 days in office on Tuesday, “Donald Trump Is Following the Sam Brownback Playbook” was the headline in the Washington Monthly magazine.
It appeared atop a story about a president so in thrall to his pet economic theories that he is making life more difficult for the people who voted for him.
Trump, wrote Nate Weisberg, is “pushing through radical policies that threaten to undermine both the economy and vital government services.” The backlash, Weisberg said, could put Democrats back in power.
If you’re a Kansan, that should sound familiar.
‘Republican, but not crazy’
Like Trump, Brownback was a culture warrior. The Kansan, who led the state from 2011 to 2018, was just less flamboyant about it.
The governor wore his anti-abortion beliefs on his sleeve. He got ahead of the Trumpian immigration backlash by taking a stand against resettling Syrian refugees in the state. He even signed a law banning the use of Muslim sharia law in Kansas courts. (It wasn’t actually being used in Kansas courts.)
Kansans mostly went along with all of this.
What changed, Weisberg noted at Washington Monthly, is that Brownback launched his much ballyhooed “experiment” to slash the state’s taxes, “insisting that a burst of economic growth would follow to pay for it all.”
The problem?
“That growth, and fresh tax revenue, never came.”
Oh, right. We all remember what happened next.
