A constant in America over the last four years—epitomized in Wisconsin—is the startlingly anxious mood of the electorate.Get everyone at the table and fix this is the prevailing popular sentiment. The great mass of apolitical voters don't want partisan blame now, just someone to clean it up.
Forget the Tea Partiers-GOP's implausible messages calling President Obama a dithering decider on one hand and a Chicago-based outlaw taking over the economy on the other. These guys are not serious.
Look at Wisconsin to lead. Whatever the result of the Gov. Doyle-Lt. Gov. Lawton-Mayor Barrett-local-national-Democratic-forces' machinations to take on the GOP nominee, a gubernatorial candidate who says, 'I will serve one term to clean up and then I'm out,' has a lot of appeal.
Brings to mind the relatively young, 68-year-old Tommy Thompson whom Scott Walker says is "pretty confident" will support Walker's candidacy. I'm pretty sure that's heavily qualified speculation.
Thompson would get killed in a race against Sen. Russ Feingold. That leaves governor.
Talk around political campfires this weekend is that Thompson is being asked often and is seriously considering a 2010 run for governor, no matter what any declared candidate says.
Clean it up. Tom Barrett gets that, though he seems a tad busy. Obama gets that. And so does Tommy Thompson.
How soon we forget. It was 14 years of Tommy Thompson that left us with a multi-billion dollar deficit that Doyle inherited, and from which we never really recovered.
ReplyDeleteTommy might offer himself as the solution, but he was the biggest part of the problem.
Point taken.
ReplyDeleteJust saying though that the political appeal of someone [and Tommy Thompson as a brand fits the bill] who presents him/her self to Wisconsin and appears above-the-fray [unlike say me, for instance] would be formidable. Barrett fits the bill. Walker does not. Neumann sort of does, because he comes across as earnest.
But I would say Thompson and Barrett culturally (and thus politically for too many) fit Wisconsin, and as we know political memories in the electorate are short.