Whose fault is it anyway? Answer: It doesn't matter
Should we hold Walker responsible? Of course. He's the one who promised that 250,000 private-sector jobs would be created during his first term - a pledge that he is far from fulfilling. But politicians always get too much blame when the economy is weak and too much credit when it is strong. We think that's the case here.Politicians certainly want praise and are given credit when things go well, or their goals are met. So why not assess blame?
After all, when the Packers lost a game to poor refereeing by replacements, the paper editorially said we could blame the NFL. In other words, when things get screwed up, blame is assessed.
In this case, he's earned it, as his policies are and were driven more by ideology, politics and payback (killing the Amtrak train, killing collective bargaining, stalling wind energy) than by carefully-thought-out programs, negotiations, and a team of rivals.
He gets the blame because we've had two+ years of failed leadership with harmful consequences - - yet the Teflon Governor wants to take this program national.
Far better for the paper's credibility to have said, 'we've backed the wrong horse, twice.'
* 2010.
* 2012.
Far be it from the Journal Sentinel, little more than an organ of the Walker campaign, to level any serious criticism at their little bald-spotted God. If Wisconsin's economy were booming, they would be singing Scottie's praises for all his bold initiatives like union busting and train killing. How embarrassing to trot out the cliche that "governprs get too much credit and too much blame." What accounts for Wisconsin's under-performing its Midwestern neighbors? One obvious variable is we have Scott Walker and they don't. Walker came in with a jobs agenda and has undermined it with his austerity policies and his completely inept operation of the supposed state job creation agency.
ReplyDeleteWe aren't suppose to blame Walker, but Walker keeps blaming Doyle...I guess its fine for the JS so long as Walker isn't being blamed.
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing -- it is hilarious for Walker to blame the protests for creating uncertainty. Who touched off the protests? Walker did, with his ham-handed, vindictive and punitive policies toward public employees. When faced with a substantial and direct impact on their livelihoods and an assualt on their freedom to bargain, public employees were just supposed to accept everything without a whimper? Surely Walker knew he could not take away bargaining rights in the state with a history of union organizing without triggering massive protests. On the contrary, I think he LIKED the protests because they allowed him to show what a tough conservative gunslinger he was.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise here at the poor state of the state under Walker's (gasp,cough, deep sigh) leadership. Didn't we get a preview of his incompetence, irrationality, and blinding ideology as Milwaukee County executive? What other governor comes into office with a fiasco of privatizing the county's court house guards resulting in effect a doubling, fiscally, of the staff? Meanwhile, as revealed too late, Walker was surrounded by people who were eventually charged with fifteen felonies. Long before Walker became governor, he had risen to his personal level of incompetence.
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