If the presidency were awarded on the basis of avoiding accountability, twisting facts and blaming others for your own failures, there is a chance that Scott Walker could get a unanimous vote of the Electoral College.
Luckily, records still DO matter, which is why it is almost breathtaking to watch Scott Walker, while at the right-wing CPAC jamboree last weekend, openly flirt with the idea of a run for president (while not committing to fill out his full term if re-elected in 2014.)
Scott Walker has governed as though going down a Tea Party checklist and with predictable results.
He cut $1.6 billion from education, and now school districts across the state are cutting classes, stuffing kids in classrooms and experiencing diminished results.
He's led a full-scale assault on health care access, recently turning down $4.4 billion in Medicaid expansion over 20 years and kicking working families off our successful BadgerCare program, and our national rankings have slipped.
He cut the state's successful vocational technical education budget by 30 percent, dragging it back to 1989 levels, and now Wisconsin faces a historic skills gap.
He gave $2.3 billion in giveaways to special interests -- and now Wisconsin is facing a record budget debt.
And, most damning, Scott Walker has turned his back on real solutions amid the Great Recession and now, Wisconsin is ranked dead last in economic indicators in the Midwest, ranking 44th in job-creation and 2nd-worst in jobs prospects for the foreseeable future.
This is not to mention becoming the first governor in Wisconsin history with a criminal defense fund, with six close associates convicted, as well as other ethical lapses bubbling up in every corner of this administration.
A normal human being would run from this record. Instead, Scott Walker considers this a basis for a run for president.
At CPAC, Walker placed 6th in a straw poll, right behind his erstwhile friend and now rival Paul Ryan, so it's not clear if he's earned the affection of even the most extreme of the corporate Tea Party activists and special interests-for whom Walker has been auditioning at the expense of our state these past few years.
I'm confident that the nation at large will see Scott Walker for what he is -- a cunning and slick politician who has to use all his powers to obscure a real record of terrible failure. But it is sad to us here in Wisconsin to see the damage Walker does to the public good as the cost of his bald ambition.