Scott Walker's Self-Interest Is Self-Defeating

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker stumbled Wednesday in a too-hurried effort to get, as they say in politics, "ahead of the story."

Fearing a county pension system investigation into an expanding series of scandals and taxpayer rip-offs - - some of which might have occurred on his watch - - Walker announced that some criminal activity might have taken place.

Oh, really?

What did he know and when did he know it?

And to whom did he report it, as is his duty?

By the disclosure, Walker appeared to be clumsily trying to inoculate himself against an inevitable comparison with his disgraced and recalled predecessor, Tom Ament, the man supposedly responsible for all of Walker's financial problems.

Walker got slapped down immediately by District Attorney John Chisholm, the man elected to prosecute wrong-doing, but who was also put into a box by Walker' unwanted and unneeded amateurish lawyering: should no charges be filed, would it be Chisholm who wasn't up to his job, since Walker had suggested otherwise?

All in all: Not a good political or leadership move by Walker, who is up for re-election in April, and doesn't have opposition.

Yet.

A transparently gratuitous abuse of power like this is just the kind of misstep that can convince an electorate that in the end, despite everything he'd said about Ament, Walker is just another self-interested courthouse pol.

Not a person of substance and stature who is up to running a county with serious problems to solve.

Final thought: Does this fit on a bumper sticker?

Walker Can't Walk The Walk.