Nearly 20 years ago, as a fresh- faced journalist, I met a stranger on the streets of Wisconsin who asked how I was doing and actually stopped to wait for an answer. Those same streets are now filled with signs equating the state’s governor to Hitler; Japanese television crews greeting my fifth-grade nephew at his school; doctors giving out fake sick notices to picketing public service workers; shouts of “Get a degree” to a Navy combat veteran protesting government benefits; and a Comedy Central camel that got stuck in the slush near a police barricade.
The tragi-comedy would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious. For the uninformed — and that would be difficult considering the wide range of coverage Wisconsin has received lately — the State Capitol has been captivated/held hostage/empowered over legislation proposed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to increase pension and health contributions of public service workers while taking away their rights to collectively bargain over anything but wages in the future.
For the state that passed the first law in the nation to permit collective bargaining for public workers (in 1959) and the city, Madison, that hosted the first meetings of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers (in 1936), the proposed changes have led to literal chaos, replete with accusations of “union busting” and “selfish public workers.”
After the governor suggested anyone who didn’t see the legislation coming must have been in “a coma,” the Democratic minority in the Senate high-tailed it to, of all places, its rival to the south, Illinois, to stop the proceedings. Tens of thousands of people have gathered every day outside the Capitol while thousands bang on drums and sleep on the marble floors each night. It’s hard to think it was just a couple weeks ago that everyone here was so happy the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl.
Many of my former colleagues in the Colorado press corps have sent texts, tweets and e-mails remarking about how lucky I’ve been to land in such a great news situation and how dull comparatively it’s been to cover Colorado’s own budget conundrum. Interestingly, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Wisconsin and Colorado are side-by- side, in the middle of the nation’s states, in their projected shortfalls when calculated as a percentage of the entire state’s budget, with 12.8 percent and 13.8 percent to balance respectively.
It has been exciting, for sure, appearing on national television just three days into my new job at Wisconsin Public Television (which makes me directly impacted by the proposed measure, for full disclosure) to analyze what was happening for the “PBS News Hour. But overall the whole situation is frankly sad; I yearn for the days when people could simply disagree with each other in person, not on satellite.
Coming back to the state where I first worked and to the Capitol where I first covered politics, it’s easy as a relative outsider to assign blame to everyone involved. Rhetoric on both sides has distorted the meaning of words and their historical context in the English language. To be blunt, removal of collective bargaining rights does not equate with the mass killing of millions of people (Hitler and Nazi Germany), nor does the governor’s call for civility on the streets and readiness of the National Guard in case it doesn’t happen in any way compare to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
This is now beyond policy, process and even politics, and has entered into the realm of egos. Who’s going to win? Who’s going to lose? Who’s going to give in? Who’s going to give up? That’s what the 30-plus cameras at every news conference want to know.
I remember former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff often quoting President Ronald Reagan: “It’s amazing what you can get done when no one cares who gets the credit.” What will inevitably get done here is that the measure will pass because the Republican majority has the votes to get that credit. As President Obama said after winning the White House in 2008, “Elections have consequences.”
Yet, the legislation, much like health care at the federal level, will be a target for overhaul by Democrats who will, at one point or another, be in charge again. So, we’ll witness this fight again and again, a political “Back to the Future” or “Groundhog Day.”
My father likes to say we’re a lot happier in life if we associate with people who speak in commas and question marks rather than periods and exclamation points. Politics has recently been all about the latter, especially in this debate.
Call me a Pollyanna, but two decades ago, I found my street greeting in Wisconsin so unique and so genuine. Sadly, what I see on those same streets today is nothing special.
Adam Schrager covered politics at 9News from 1999-2011. He is now a producer and reporter for Wisconsin Public Television.
