Stories on the passing of former University of Hawaii President Harlan Cleveland paint a picture of an extraordinally accomplished man: dip0lomat, scholar, author, journalist and more — all before he took over the reins at a troubled UH Manoa in 1969.

Oddly, Cleveland may be remembered over time not for his many accomplishments, but for the simple but profound idea contained in a single 1950 quote: “The revolution of rising expectations.”

This was the idea that creating expectatations (and perhaps the climate) for improvement in life or society is a powerful act. Once people know there is something better and are convinced they deserve it, they become a revolutionary force.

Cleveland was thinking globally when he said this. But the thought applies to his own tenure at the UH. The former diplomat came in when the campus was in turmoil over Vietnam and, at the same time, on the verge of major expansiona and improvement. With Gov. John A. Burns ready and willing to spend what it took to make the UH a first-class institution, Cleveland moved fast to open a law school, expand the medical school and expand the university’s reach statewide.

He didn’t get as far as he wanted, in part because the the pin-striped diplomat just couldn’t reach a comfortable accomodation with Hawaii lawmakers who expected a different kind of relationship with the university president.

So, ironically, Cleveland created a revolution of rising expectations for the state’s university, a revolution that has yet to fully accomplish its goals.

The State Senate’s rejection of high-profile UH regent Kitty Lagareta has produced  high-octane rhetoric from both sides.

Lagareta: The Legislature is trying to micro-manage the UH and lawmakers don’t like anyone who bucks their will.

Senate: The UH is struggling in many areas and the Regents are ultimate responsible.

All true. All true.

Over the years the Legislature has gone out of its way to tell the University how it should manage its affairs. Reluctantly, lawmakers gave the UH “autonomy” but that hasn’t stopped folks from trying to put their thumb in the academic pie where it isn’t wanted.

By the same token, the Regents are ultimately responsible for the UH and must answer to the folks who have to balance the state budget. And if the Senate’s advice and consent powers are to mean anything, it has to be able to refuse to consent from time-to-time.

So Senators have the right to reject anyone they want. But you can’t help wondering whether Lagareta’s in-your-face style and close association with Republican Gov. Linda Lingle didn’t have more than a little to do with the Senate’s decision to choose her particular appointment as the place to demonstrate their independence and concern about the state’s premier university.

I’ve often written in this spot about the difficulty lawmakers have in writing sensible, foolproof campaign spending laws. They just know too much about the system to make simple, or simplistic decisions. But it’s not just fundraising and spending that tends to tie legislators into knots. Writing strong, fair and useful ethics legislation also puts them into a tizzy of “what-if’s.”Two examples popped up in the last few days: Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann vetoed a bill pushed by Council member Charles Djou that would have banned city workers from making any decisions that impact on their previous private-sector employer until a full year had passed in their new city job.There already is a law that works the other way, in theory preventing former city officials from coming back before their former office in search of favors or decisions. So why not do it the other way around? Hannemann says new city workers can already excuse themselves from decisions when there is a direct conflict. But a mandatory law, he says, would make it tough to entice new people into government service at a time when the job market is already tight. Fair enough. But the point of most ethics laws is not to deal with actual breaches — most people are up-and-up. The point of the law is to tell the public there won’t even be an appearance of conflict. That’s because folks like to engage in dark suspicions. So, when a city office makes a favorable decision for the new boss’s former employer, the appearance remains whether or not the new guy had anything to do with it.The other ethics arm-wrestling was a bill debated in the state House that would prevent a lawmaker from doing any work for state agencies worth more than $10,000 a year. That restriction could hurt any number of legislators who work off-session for state social agencies, the courts, schools or hospitals.In fact, the biggest fuss was put up by Rep. Josh Green, a physician, who works in a state hospital on the Big Island. Green insisted the last-minute addition of the ban was put in by Judiciary Chair Tommy Waters as retribution because Green and Waters have tangled on malpractice reform.That indeed may have been part of the motivation, if the smoke signals are any indication. But the prohibition makes some sense. Again it is the perception thing. It’s not hard to imagine a lawmaker balking at state budget cuts if they are aimed at the place he or she works in the off-season. That’s human nature. If such a prohibition makes it, it will cause trouble for any number of legislators. But at some point, they may have to decide whether their work for the state is more important or valuable than their lawmaking. Tough choice. 

Now we’ll see whether our elected leaders have what it takes to deal with a nearly impossible situation.

The back-to-back shutdowns by Aloha Airlines and then Mainland carrier ATA is nothing short of a body-blow to the state, its economy and the political process.

The state says the shut-downs could punch a 500,000-person sized hole in the visitor count this year. That would be huge. Now, it is likely that other carriers and other options will step up and the falloff in visitors might not be quite as dramatic as those first estimates.

But for state lawmakers and the governor, just now getting down to the fine work of building a new state budget, this situation has to be treated realistically.

The tax consequences of a 500,000 fall off in visitor arrivals would be catastrophic. Even something far short of that throws existing budget and tax collection projections out the window.

And prudently, lawmakers should use the bigger, and more dire, numbers as they figure out what the state will collect and what it can spend over the next year on schools, services, welfare and the like.

That means many of the “nice-to-have” items that were surviving the budget process may have to drop out. But let’s hope our elected officials go beyond simply cutting the budget back to meet diminished expectations.

 This is a time for creativity and fresh ideas for economic ideas that can produce dollars, jobs and some of the taxes those hundreds of thousands of tourists would otherwise have paid.

If you completely understand the controversy over a proposal to “clarify” a state law on campaign contributions from corporation, you have been paying more attention than most.

Lawmakers went for the clarification after the Campaign Spending Commission issued a ruling on a previous law (a ruling still under appeal in the courts) that severely limited what corporations could give or spend.  But the effort was dropped after some campaign spending reform advocates said they smelled a rat.

The simple solution would be to follow the lead of the federal government and simply outlaw direct contributions from corporations or unions, both of which remain legal under Hawaii law.

The problem with that approach, as the federal situation shows us, is that when direct contributions are banned or Political Action Committee contributions are limited, the union and corporate money simply finds its way into other “independent” groups that do “issue” advertising that clearly favors one candidate or hurts another.

Once again, this demonstrates that writing good campaign spending legislation is the toughest thing lawmakers can do, because they are unusually able to see where the loopholes might emerge.