Advocating Progress

theatlantic:

Wisconsin, One Year Later

A year ago this month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker proposed a slate of changes to public-employee benefits, including sharply limiting government workers’ right to bargain collectively. The action quickly provoked a firestorm. A hundred thousand protesters camped out at the capitol building in Madison; the minority Democrats in the state Senate fled the state to prevent the bill from passing.

Walker got his changes through the state legislature anyway, but the fight wasn’t over — in fact, it was just beginning.

In Madison today, the reverberations of a year ago are still being felt. And for Walker, the determined, grandiose politician at the center of it all, the biggest battle still lies ahead: He is all but certain to face a tough recall election this summer.

The after-effects of the protests have been “not so much a hangover as a bender,” said Tom Holbrook, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Walker’s response has been to frame his recall as a referendum, not on his own leadership or the issue of public workers’ rights and privileges, but on the very idea that any political leader can enact large-scale change. It is an odd, self-aggrandizing, and slightly bullying posture: He is daring voters to put up or shut up.

Read more. [Image: Darren Hauck/Reuters]