What on earth happened to Thom Tillis?

Two takeaways from Thom Tillis going viral Tuesday by saying restaurants maybe shouldn't have to make their staffers reach for the soap:

1) Speechmaking is hard. Thom Tillis is not a dumb man. He can work his way in and out of policy particulars with the best of them. Yet there he was Tuesday with a Class A Washington Uh-Oh. He grossed out America with mental pictures of restaurant staffers handling their food after a soap-free trip to the restroom. Even worse, he proposed replacing one regulation (a sign requiring handwashing at restaurants) with another regulation (requiring restaurants to say they don't wash hands) all in the name of smaller government.

What happened here? Our theory: He tried to go off-script a little. He wanted to be a little funny. He wanted to be a little bold. So he veered from the prepared notes and thoughts that politicos bring to these forums. It's certainly not the first time he's blurted something less-than-smart or tried too hard to impress his audience.

It's also a reminder: It's hard to stand in front of audiences, be intelligent, keep things interesting, and say what the people want to hear. Politicians who do it well should be admired for their smarts, not ridiculed for their smoothness. Tillis is thoughtful and forthright, but too quick to freelance. Given the national ridicule he invited Tuesday, we're guessing he'll be a quick learner, too.

2) Tillis is wrapping a good idea in bad packaging. The good idea is to take a thoughtful look at regulations. See which of them might be duplicative. See which might be unnecessary. (Is encouraging handwashing unnecessary? If you've ever worked in a kitchen, you'd say no.) The bad packaging is "small government," because the goal behind looking at regulations shouldn't be to reduce the size of government, but to make government work better.

This is the trap Republicans too often find themselves in with regulations. They could sell a solid outcome - improving government - but they chain themselves to the sexier outcome, making government smaller. Tillis got tangled in the latter yesterday, then compounded his mistake by proposing something that didn't even make government smaller.

One more takeaway: With all this talk about handwashing Tuesday, we couldn't help but remember one of our favorite grumps, Charlotte's Robert D. Raiford, proposing that we all never shake hands again. 

Peter St. Onge

Tillis: Kill handwashing rules for restaurants

Our newly minted U.S. Senator Thom Tillis has found himself at the center of a viral video today, thanks to his comments at a policy forum that he'd be OK with cutting government regulations that might require restaurant employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom.

He said so in the course of speaking out against what he believes to be an over-regulated American society. He said he'd be fine with allowing restaurants to opt out of such regulations, provided they post a sign saying that their employees don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom. That, he added, would allow market forces to dictate the matter rather than government, as such restaurants would quickly go out of business for lack of customers.

It's in keeping with his small-government political philosophy. But even with the context, it still sounds awful weird for anybody to speak up against rules forcing handwashing by restaurant workers. (It appears he's talking about Section 2-301.14(B) of the N.C. Food Code Manual, if you care to get technical about it). It's pretty understandable that the host of the chat, held earlier this week at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, takes a humorous jab at him by winding up their chat with, "Well, I'm not sure I'm going to shake your hand..." before thanking him for his time and -- yes -- shaking his hand.

Thanks for your thoughts on that, Thom. If it's all the same, we'll stick with the mandatory hand-washing rules. We're pretty sure restaurants can survive them.

--Eric Frazier