Wisconsin's Governor Panders and “Punts”
Jetting across the big pond to face questions from the British press has become the GOP equivalent of a sparring match, or maybe a few rounds of exhibition boxing. It doesn't count. Presidential hopefuls who prepare for this match, who possess intelligence, and whose diverse and deep life-experiences inform their judgment (and who thereby evince gravitas), can add a feather of credibility to their caps.
But what about the sad lot of GOP presidential wannabes, the hopelessly unfit who constitute the entire candidate pool? What happens to these “also-rans?”
The “also-rans” get smacked down. If they're smart, they stay down for the count and slink away to pursue the education and life-experiences that make for well-rounded, empathetic, capable human beings, in any field of human endeavor.
But (and you knew this conjunction was inevitable)...
But the also-rans do not possess the intelligence, specifically the intra-personal intelligence, nor the humility, to see their short-comings, their areas of ignorance, their deficits. Buoyed up by an empty egotism, a “faith” in themselves that masks malevolent ambition (and a host of other anti-social pathologies), the also-rans stumble on.
Notice I didn't say “stumble forward.” Such a phrase hints at the possibility that learning occurs.
The East-Coast's empty-suit du jour, Scott Brown, irritated the citizens of two separate states (two!) with two very public demonstrations of cluelessness and rank unsuitability for public office. (His handlers, and this is curious, referred to both incidents as “campaigns.”) The “tactics” of this textbook-case Tweedledum escaped the notice of similarly-disabled dolts now seeking the GOP nomination. Brown stumbled on, but he didn't stumble forward...he failed to exhibit learning.
Among recent GOP candidates, the most visible practitioner of Pathological Unsuitability Syndrome (PUS) has been Mittford Blunderbuss Romney, the unsurpassed master of accidental discharge. In a twisted way, he promised a smooth transition from George Bush the Unread (and Unready). During the Bush reign of error, Americans were subjected to month upon month of national disgrace and international ridicule.
Romney is a one-man, wince-inducing wunderkind. He of the rare talent for foot-into-mouth edicts appeared the sensible successor to the Bush/Cheney mass-produced-lies-machine. Romney, Palin, Caine, Jindal, Carson, Scott, Brownback, Santorum, Gohmert, King, Paul and Cruz have cemented the GOP's reputation as the “fell-off-the-edge” party. Bush, alas, wasn't just a one-off accident. Especially excruciating in Romney's campaign, though, were the moments he appeared on camera with his wife, and she, straining to appear casual, would engage in the supremely co-dependent ritual of explaining her husband to the world.
It is with this tableau of tedious, tepid twits still twisting in the wind upstage that Scott Walker enters down right. A man of inestimable mediocrity, so hollow that they plug his ears on windy days to curb the whistling, Walker is better understood not as the dark horse candidate, but the dead one.
Rising from a typhoidal swamp of Koch-gas like a biblical plague, this the most deadly of the plagues, that of the inflatable sociopaths, Walker is a puppet of the hidden malevolents. The machine that manipulates this marionette decided Pinocchio should go to London on a “trade mission.” This ruse is a convenient way to make Wisconsinites foot the airfare and accommodations. It will also be spun as evidence the puppet could imitate speech and appear at ease in an international setting.
You might as well have tossed Pinocchio into a bonfire. The end result would have been more purposeful and productive than any supposed “trade mission.”
It baffles the thinking minds of this nation that the GOP sends raw recruits into the “No-Man's Land” that is a Q&A with the British free press. After sending Romney, Christie and Jindal to swing clumsily at the off-speed questions lobbed by the Brits, the right's image-makers still, still, STILL, haven't learned how to prepare GOP presidential hopefuls.
Or rather, these image-making machines have not accepted the hard truth that stuffing empty suits with talking points (and coaching them on how to stay on message), cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. A serious candidate has to be capable of thinking, has to be able to think on his or her feet. It has to be human, not a mere toady who tosses out talking points. It has to show some independence of thought, and express thoughts that are not patently infantile, ignorant, racist, chauvinistic, medieval...
These observations preclude a one-trick pony like Walker. Had he been born later and entered school in a more recent decade, educators would have quickly singled him out for testing to isolate and diagnose his information processing deficits, which may include Autism Spectrum Disorder. Educators, guidance counselors and school psychologists would also have spoken to his parents about Walker's anti-social proclivities and burgeoning amorality.
That Scott Walker has any status as a public figure speaks to his long-practice at observing human social behavior and aping it. This is not the same as understanding it or experiencing it. Sending him into a foreign culture, where memes, words, talking points and dog whistling fall on deaf ears or cause offense, was doomed to fail.
It seems the GOP ideologues who continue this “tradition” of handicapping their candidates have no history. They forget, or never knew, that this foreign land in which their hopefuls stumble and stutter produced Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Newton, Dickens, Churchill, and scores, scores of other notable intellectuals, politicians and writers.
Churchill, were he so inclined to stoop that low, could have torn a buffoon like Walker to shreds with one sentence. He would then have spit out the gristle, asked for a toothpick, and recited the limerick he had composed in that instant to commemorate the event. Were Walker to live to the age of one hundred and fifty, he will never be one tenth the formidable and sometimes admirable conservative that Churchill was.
Britain also has a press and a culture of journalism so raucous, lively, subversive and, to the American ear, rude and boorish, that they may be likened to a pack of dingoes. These dingoes, mind you, know how to smile and appear friendly. And the crop of GOP presidential hopefuls, marching toward the Thames like lemmings, are such easy meat. No need to even try catching these foreign conservatives in a lie. No need to quote their own prior confessions of idiocy back to them, or badger them with factual data. Ask them the simplest of questions...
Walker was doomed. The British Press knew exactly what to ask. Brits see the GOP as some lower form of life, Morlocks, and take great joy in tapping the GOP touchstones of stupidity...with a hammer.
The itinerary for Walker's bogus “trade mission” was tightly controlled, choreographed to yield the nicest back-pats and shallowest of smiles and sympathies. These guaranteed its place in the empty-gesture wastebasket of history. And the rigid scheduling curbs Walker's talent for flailing and flagellating when he wanders off message.
So the dingoes waited, and encircled the lamb.
The slaughter came at Chatham House, which touts itself as “an international affairs think tank.” Walker spoke for about fifteen minutes, then took questions. Oddly though, he dodged several questions about foreign policy.
The supreme irony in this simply must, must, be highlighted. He was speaking at an international affairs think tank, dodging questions about foreign affairs. This behavior from a man with ambitions to become the Chief Executive in a nation that still warrants some consideration, still exudes some modest gravitas, in the free world.
"Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it?"
Here was Walker's chance to reconnect with his audience and convince the press he was not another fringe-element fruitcake foolishly sent abroad by the American Right for “finishing.”
Walker blew it. The British Press, indeed the whole of Britain, has viewed with detached amusement the self-immolation of sanity in the GOP. Walker could have broken the mold, escaped the “nut-suit” that is the uniform of the political Right these days...and he blew it. He couldn't rally enough brain cells to give a simple, face-saving, sensible answer. The intellectual effort was beyond his capacity. His backpedaling away from salvation set the island to snickering, then laughing, then guffawing at the stupidity of the American Republican Party.
Here is what Walker, were he intelligent, could have said.
“I'm quite comfortable with evolutionary theory. So far it has proven durable and defensible. Developed using scientific methodology, it offers the best working explanation for how flora and fauna achieved their current expressions. And intelligent, thoughtful people who also happen to be religious recognize that evolutionary theory offers no answer to existential questions, doesn't try to, and is not a refutation of religious traditions. The two can co-exist peacefully.”
This statement was typed in less than two minutes. That is all the effort and thought that the topic of evolution required. That's it.
Walker's failure is manifold. A Chief Executive has to be intelligent and courageous enough to lead, and humble enough to take counsel. Walker has always been a follower. First he followed his own aimless, heartless, empty ambition, a hollowness instilled in him by defective, deficient parenting. Then he swallowed a hook baited with Koch. Now he makes no move without consulting the Koch Bible.
Beatitudes 3:12, “Blessed are the moneymakers, for they shall inherit the Earth.”
The Chief Executive has to use reason and persuasion to achieve reasonable compromise. Walker's terms as Milwaukee County Executive and Governor reveal him incapable of compromise. He is, quite simply, cognitively unequal to the challenge. His singular achievement has been to divide the citizens of Wisconsin into two groups, the willfully blind who adore his tyranny out of ignorance, and the just majority who revile his every attempt to further disenfranchise and marginalize them. As a consequence the state economy suffers because businesses hesitate to set up shop here, while Walker's policies continue to rob so many Wisconsinites of disposable income and economic power. Worst of all, polarized neighbors, friends and relatives shout each other down in Civil War.
Walker had a chance to prove he can unite Wisconsinites in common cause. He failed. His dodge, “I'm going to punt on that one,” showed Walker is a coward, afraid to alienate a tiny fringe-element who wave money under his nose and stuff it in his pockets while they vote Jesus an honorary membership at the country club.
Unlike his “kick-the-can-down-the-road” approach to budgets, and his, “Yeah, yeah, we'll get to it,” approach to genuine, broadly experienced economic recovery, Walker cannot dodge his way into the White House. He keeps promising that prosperity is just around the corner, but keeps pointing to corners that are farther and farther away. In the meantime, he proposes policies straight out of the Americans for Prosperity playbook, policies that strangle and reverse economic recovery while granting still more unearned welfare to one-percenters and corporations. What he says he will do and what he actually does don't match.
Walker, you see, cannot and will not learn, or value, anything that does not aid in his empty quest for money and power. He will not learn. Consider Act 10, consider his massive budget reduction proposal for the UW-System, consider his meddling with the wording of the UW-System mission statement, and ask yourself: Is this revenge? Compelled to earn his grades at Marquette University by exhibiting academic rigor, perhaps for the first time in his life, caught violating the rules while campaigning for student body president, losing that election...the skills he had always used to compensate for his learning disabilities and to navigate a world of social interactions whose motivations were alien to him, those skills had failed him. He was suddenly rudderless. Walker could not face his deficits and his failures. He left school. Soon after, the Koch brothers would offer him an identity.
Walker's track record still offers this promise: Should he run for president, he will leave the state budget and state economy in shambles. He did exactly that to Milwaukee County when he left his post as Milwaukee County Executive. The man is a master at leaving disaster in his wake. But because the Walker worldview places no value on history, including his personal history, and values only the present pursuit of money and power, the past is of no value. He refuses to learn from the past, too.
Walker is one specific type of narcissistic sociopath. Attached to the state like a leech, his only “talents” are a single-minded pursuit of money and power, and an absolutely amoral willingness to use aides and hangers-on as expendable commodities in pursuit of that money and power. Walker acts and exists as if he has no past, no history save for the bizarre, fractured and imaginary time-line he cites in speeches to the select and the loyal. That the GOP enables these behaviors and this pathology signals how diseased the party itself has grown.
Given a chance to put aside all questions about his leadership qualities, Walker “punted.” He is not a leader. He is a mere manager, beholden to Koch-edicts, the Wisconsin economy be damned.
The sharpest barb Walker received about his cowardice was hurled from the chairwoman of his high school science department. Asked how Walker should deal with the “E” word, Ann Serpe was curt. “Answer the question when they ask you!” She added, “He could have manned up a bit.”
You go, girl! Say, would you consider running for governor of Wisconsin?