John Nichols: Why Not Democracy in Wisconsin?

By John Nichols, The Capital Times

23 July 13

he measures of democracy are easily made: Do most citizens vote? Is it easy for them to do so? Are their votes counted? Do they live in districts drawn so that there is real competition? Do elected officials face the voters frequently enough so that they can be held to account? Is the influence of the money power sufficiently regulated so that one side does not have the ability to control the debate by literally shouting down the other?

A century ago, Wisconsin led the nation on these measures.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote: "Thanks to the movement for genuinely democratic popular government which Sen. (Robert M.) La Follette led to overwhelming victory in Wisconsin, that state has become literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole."

Note the equation Roosevelt used: The "movement for genuinely democratic popular government" made possible necessary social and economic reforms. The former president said that would not only prevent "government by a plutocracy" but would, in fact, give citizens "a new machinery" to force "a change for the better in their political, their social, and their economic conditions."

That new machinery is grinding to a halt in Wisconsin. Voting rights are under assault, gerrymandering has made most districts uncompetitive, elections are less frequent and there are proposals afoot to eliminate elected statewide positions and to implement 16-year terms for Supreme Court justices in a bizarre attempt to avoid actually having to address the influence of money on court races.

The circumstance is absurd. And it should be called that.

There is much discussion this summer about who should run for governor in 2014, and about the platform of the challenger to Gov. Scott Walker - whose allegiance to the money power was reconfirmed just last week by his ranking as one of the worst governors in America in a national survey by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. But the focus on Walker misses the deeper point.

The reality is that, over many years, and in all too many ways, Wisconsin has strayed from its democratic traditions. It was not merely Walker who made Wisconsin a laboratory of plutocracy, rather than democracy. Simply defeating Walker will not, in and of itself, usher in a new age of reform.

The real effort, which can and should attract the support of Democrats, Republicans, independents and the great mass of frustrated citizens, should be a renewal of democracy - and with it fair politics and honest governance. Wisconsin does not merely need a new governor. Wisconsin needs a new progressive moment sufficient to restore our status as America's laboratory of democracy.