As you see from my other comments, I share your frustration on the lack of leadership in dealing with the other crises we face. 

As for them "beat[ing] down the opposition (internal and external)," I am not sure that opposition was completely noble. There seemed to be three sources of opposition: 1) the hotel industry, which were the ones who forced the Senate to back away from last sessions agreement between Luke and Tokuda to increase the TAT to pay for it instead of continuing to rely upon the more regressive GET. 2) Neighbor islanders who were unhappy about using the TAT collected on their islands to pay for Oahu's problem and 3) those who wanted to use the budget shortfall to kill or redesign the Rail project. 1) I don't care about #1. 2) I think it was a mistake to run roughshod over those concerns. Gov. Ige "gets" that. 3) The Lege was not going to kill the Train nor was it in their power to redesign it to end at Middle St. A "forensic audit" would have taken too long.