To Be or Not To Be Nasty

It's not every day that the whole country turns its eyes on Wisconsin when the Packers aren't playing.

Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, survived his recall election Tuesday, and people have begun trying to figure out what it means.

Is this a formula for a Mitt Romney victory in Wisconsin? Should Walker's combative approach become a model for Republican governors? Does it prove that the voters are serious about tackling the debt? Can you use a fiscal crisis as a pretext for attacking your opponents' power base, do it in a contemptuous way and survive?

The answer to that last question is yes, provided you have a 10-1 spending advantage and face a weak candidate.

A friend of mine who grew up in Milwaukee and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin told me: "To me, the recall is really about how Wisconsinites don't like nastiness. Walker was nasty, and that is not what Wisconsin or Wisconsin politics (if we forget about Joe McCarthy) is all about. Many people were disturbed not by Walker's politics or what he did but by how he went about it. I wish the Democrats had chosen a stronger challenger, because a defeat of Walker could have sent a message to the nation that we need to return to some sense of civility in government."

But maybe it wouldn't take a defeat to do that.

In his speech to the adoring throng Tuesday night, Walker allowed himself one short victory lap. He said: "Tonight we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions."

Then he made a quick pivot to say: "We'll renew our commitment to help grow the quality of life for all of our citizens, both those who voted for me and those who voted for someone else, because tomorrow is the day after the election, and tomorrow we are no longer opponents. Tomorrow we are one as Wisconsinites so together we can move Wisconsin forward."

Is this a tactical cease-fire, or are they the sentiments of a first-term governor who dodged a bullet and is thinking, "Maybe I could have won some concessions from labor, treated my opponents with respect and balanced the budget in a way that didn't provoke a nasty, costly political backlash and could have gotten me killed"?

Realistically, though, I think he's probably thrilled with the national adulation from conservative Republicans.

It'll be interesting to watch and see whether Walker takes advantage of the opening his victory gives him and shifts into a "magnanimous because I vanquished" kind of governor.

Outside Wisconsin, his win could feed the idea that you can be combative and win — or perhaps even that you have to be combative to win.

The trend of the presidential campaign is not toward being nice — even now that the fight for the independent voters is on in full.

Some in the Republican base have complained that Romney — in setting up President Barack Obama to take him down — has said, "Obama is a nice guy."

"He is not a nice guy!" one Republican complained. (Figure it out, lady. He's talking to 100 million people; every message doesn't have your name on it.)

Former President Bill Clinton was doing penance the other day when he said at a fundraiser that a Romney election would be "calamitous for the country and the world."

He was trying to make it up to the Obama campaign for having said about Romney earlier in the week, "A man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."

That line, acknowledging Romney's qualifications, is more authentically Clinton. If he himself were running against Romney, he'd say: "He's a good man. He's an honorable man. He believes what he says. He is convinced his policies will help the country, and if he becomes president, he will try to do what he says he's going to do. But we have to decide whether we want him to do that." Then he'd get into the argument.

I don't get why people can't campaign like that today. Is it that it can't work? Or maybe it just takes a political genius to make it work and we don't have any geniuses in politics today because they all wisely sought another line of work.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at tomrosshirt@gmail.com. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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