October 19, 2007
Rule 12 has its day
By Bill Kraus
Back in 1980 I enunciated the 14 rules of government. Number 12 read: “People are interested in a government that works. Partisans are interested in issues that inflame.”
Way ahead of my time.
The people sat by and watched as the parties lost their role and power, as special interests took over the government, as the need for money for campaigns drove otherwise respectable people into perilous waters, even as legislative leaders went to jail for abusing the awesome power that a failed system had devolved on them.
It would appear, however, that the inability of the elected representatives to do what they were elected to do has finally brought the 12th rule into play.
Even though the outstate press devotes most of its reporting to local or regional news, and the once vaunted Milwaukee paper has reduced its coverage of state government, the word has somehow leaked out to the people of Wisconsin. This tribalized government isn’t working.
There is talk of part-time legislators, of reductions in legislative and caucus staffs, of cutting pay and per diems, of all sorts of draconian steps which might overcome the deafness that inflicts invincible incumbents.
Not because the incumbents are making bad policy decisions, not even because they are paying too much attention to the special interests and not enough to the general interest, but because the place isn’t working. Because they aren’t earning their pay.
Something as mundane as that.
You never know what and when something will happen that will prove Pogo’s dictum—I have found the enemy and it is us—wrong.
Will pure bickering and pettiness and inability to compromise do what brigandry hasn’t?
It’s possible.
And it’s about time.
If you are or know a potential clean government candidate who will campaign against instead of on money, and who will promise to bring competence and civility to the job, 2008 could be a vintage year for you or him or her.
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