As I mentioned earlier, I’m deep in the weeds of putting the new issue of the Washington Monthly online so y’all can peruse it for free, starting Monday morning. But we did do something special this time around by giving sneak-peeks at two of our feature articles. One of them is on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. He’s a hot topic right now because he’s well-positioned to do very well if not win the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. And that makes him a serious contender to become the Republican nominee and quite possibly the next president of the United States.
I’ll let Ed set this up:
In a sneek peek from the June/July/August issue of the Washington Monthly, the University of Maryland’s Donald F. Kettl (who is also a former director of the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin) takes a closer look at Walker’s assault on the unions and concludes it made little or no sense other than as an act of partisan and ideological warfare that he would be likely to continue in Washington if he becomes president.
Only a few of us live in Wisconsin, but virtually all of us live in America. We can all be impacted by a Walker presidency, and I think it’s useful to try to understand the man. If Prof. Kettl is correct, Walker is likely to continue his war on government and public service unions in Washington DC with even less justification than he had in Wisconsin. He’s also likely to be vindictive towards those he perceives to be his political enemies, even if those people are just trying to raise a family while working somewhere in the Federal bureaucracy.
But to really understand Kettl’s analysis, you have to look at his proof that Walker got famous and popular by tackling a set of problems that didn’t actually exist.
Sound familiar?
