Governor Walker gave his State of the State Address last Wednesday. I wouldn’t normally have watched it, but several of my friends were being filmed for a WisconsinEye program recapping the Governor’s speech, so I watched the speech and my friends’ responses.
I was struck by Walker’s poise and confidence. He is a young governor, fresh-faced and cheerful. I haven’t seen him speak many times. After a trying year—including his own successful recall last month, with a redo election pending—I expected him to show signs of wear and tear.
But he looked just as young as the day he was elected, every bit the successful, widely-respected politician that he is…among conservatives. There wasn’t a hint of the failed, widely-despised politician that he is among progressives.
I was also struck by the pageantry of the whole affair. I rolled my eyes at the many things the governor said to rally his troops, the Republican side of the aisle, who gave him standing ovation after standing ovation while the Democrats gave sullen looks or lukewarm applause.
What unity the Republicans seemed to be displaying, even down to their gender! They were almost all male, and they wore matching suits. The Democrats looked more diverse and disheveled, ravaged after a year of watching helplessly as their state crumbled.
And what acting was displayed by both sides! Each statesperson appeared to be calculating, at every phrase, how it might appear if he or she clapped, stood, or smiled. I was a bit disgusted—at the showmanship, the ritual of the governor speaking without substance, and the reinforcement of who’s on which side.
But the thing that most disturbed me was the governor’s failure to acknowledge the conflict in the state. When the WisconsinEye moderator later asked my friends what had been left out of the speech, they offered things like “lack of support for health care reform” and “weakening environmental regulation.”
Yes, but regardless of how we each feel about the issues, I think there’s one thing most Wisconsinites agree on: our state is far more divided now than it was a year ago. And that division centers around Governor Walker.
One year ago, Walker was elected and was disliked by most Democrats and liberals around the state. But in the time since then, he has gone from being merely disliked to being the most polarizing figure imaginable. The recall effort against him gathered one million signatures, nearly twice the number required. As he gave his speech, several different times he was interrupted by citizens shouting angrily, and when his speech ended, Republican applause was drowned out by booing.
Through it all, he smiled, fresh-faced and cheerful, without a glance or a look of concern when he was interrupted. He just grinned amicably at the Republican side of the aisle, as if nothing was amiss.
I was chilled at his relaxed confidence. Is this how we’re doing politics nowadays? First, dealing a blow to half the state, then pretending they don’t exist at all, even when they’re right in front of you? I felt so disappointed at the utter absence of any mention of the state’s terrible new divide. It’s as if, to Walker and the Republicans, process doesn’t matter at all. As long as you get your agenda passed, it’s perfectly acceptable to burn all the bridges, leaving nothing but animosity in your wake.
To me, Walker appeared to be living in his own world, a world of half-truths. He pandered to half the room; he smiled to half the state. The other half was unworthy even of acknowledgment. He was the governor of half the state, the other half be damned.
I wish he’d been more of a true leader that night. I wish he’d acknowledged the drums pounding outside, the people shouting from the gallery, the disjointed discrepancy between Republicans’ enthusiasm and Democrats’ stricken faces. I wish he’d spoken of the trying year we’ve had, the tragedy of our state’s division, and his respect, at least, for the people’s desire to have their voices heard. He could have offered some gesture of reconciliation, some vision of hope that in the future the great state of Wisconsin—the whole state—can come back together.
But he didn’t. And it’s this, as much as his policies, that makes me feel he has to go.
Wow, Katie. I am surprised, this is the most blatantly partisan thing I have seen you write, ever. You are quick to blame Walker for a lot of things, mostly the divisiveness in the state. It is not what Walker has done that made us divided, it’s just that we are now willing to talk about and air our differences after many years of complete democrat control that was ruining this great state. Of course he did not acknowledge the hecklers, he has been dealing with their childish behavior at every event he has attended, including the Special Olympics Ceremony. They have had protests outside of his personal home and have spent the entire year screaming and yelling at him, and usually got more press coverage than the event he was attending in the first place. He should ignore them, and he did. I for one wish he was more like Chris Christie and yelled back, but he is better than that. The bottom line is that the state is, financially, much better off thanks to the reforms the governor and the GOP pushed through last year, and many of us that voted for him are quite happy with the changes made. We are tired of unions and liberal causes controlling our state, pushing us towards fiscal failure like Illinois, our little Greece Next Door. I realize you and I are on opposing sides, politically, but that does not mean we dislike each other.
You are one of my favorite people. I respect your writing greatly, and your usually well thought out and careful analysis of all of the factors required to make a decision, but this entry could have been written by Graemme Zielinksi.
Todd, I actually thought of you as I was posting this and worried that you’d be particularly rankled or disappointed in my partisanship you’re one of my most “loyal”(if that’s the word) conservative readers. But I decided to let loose and go for it anyway, placing it alongside other very-partisan posts I’ve written like “Wisconsin is Open for Business.” Yes, I realize that I’m placing all the blame for Wisconsin’s division on the Governor, perhaps unfairly so…though I do feel that the majority of it falls on his shoulders. True, in the past we were also divided, but I really feel that the division became much sharper under Walker. I believe he and the Republicans could have pushed through their fiscal agenda in a way that wouldn’t have so divided the state by having more public hearings and fewer closed-door meetings, refraining from belittling and lying about the protesters, etc. But of course, you and I will continue to disagree since we have different perspectives. I like you too and appreciate things you write, as well! And I think you’ll like tomorrow’s post a bit better. I wrote both of these posts at the same time, and decided to make a different point with each.
Bipartisanship has been dead a long time… Walker just put the final nail in the coffin. This is a dark thought, but about a year ago, I came up with this idea… The country (and the state) is going down the toilet. There isn’t much you can do to stop it. So, if you are going to hit rock bottom, it is better to get to the bottom quickly, and get it over with. After months of feeling very angry about the political situation, I felt calm for the first time in a long time. I decided to call this idea the Phoenix Effect. This effect basically consists of the idea that the our current political form has to be burned to the ground, and only out of that a new, and better, political system emerge. Our current system hasn’t been working well for a long time. New thoughts and ideas need to be interjected into the mix for things to change. Sooner or later people will start to work with each other again. You have to, because the only other choice is the destruction of the country. I don’t think that will happen. Note: Burning the current system to the ground is a figurative statement… not a literal one.