Wisconsin recall election: Scott Walker, Republicans – 1; American democracy – 0

The second change to American democracy this recall election highlighted is the growth of off-campus legislation-producing organizations. External influence in lawmaking is nothing new, but it is becoming more formal and sophisticated.

The Washington-based American Legislative Exchange Council (known by its acronym ALEC), for example, brings together lawmakers, corporate lawyers, and other stakeholders to draft legislative templates for Congress and state legislatures. Walker’s most controversial education reforms grew out of this process, and the same measures showed up in other states.

The third factor threatening American governance is intransigence. There is a wide gulf between the kind of shrewd political muscle that made Lyndon Johnson an effective majority leader and the oppose-everything approach of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Their hardline stance has filtered out to the states as the tea party flexes its demands for more conservative, more inflexible leaders and candidates. In Wisconsin, Republican state senator Dick Spanbauer, exasperated with his own party, is following Maine Senator Olympia Snow’s path into retirement.

For decades Republicans have cited the 10th Amendment principle of federalism as evidence of the Framers’ intent to limit the role of the federal government by leaving all but a few specified functions – the national budget and defense – to the states. Wisconsin shows how the conservative movement is shifting, evolving its strategy to advance its agenda in the name of federalism.

Fifteen years ago, Republicans in Congress advocated sweeping changes at the federal level – welfare reform, for instance, and dismantling the department of education. Now, they’re chipping away at the institutions they oppose and weakening the diverse constituencies on the left through coherent policy reforms financed and conceived of or enhanced externally.

According to the National Conference of State Legislators, there are now more than 100 bills in process to end collective bargaining. Like similarities occur in education and voter registration reforms across Republican-controlled states.

Against these threats, and with moderates increasingly standing down or voted out, it is hard to see how an ethos of compromise can be restored to American politics. The notion of shared interests seems temporarily, at least, to have been lost. And that may be the value of Wisconsin.

Recalls are rare. In all of American history, Wisconsin’s was the third. They have a taint of something tawdry, or else of desperation. In Wisconsin, people were moved by deep frustration and dismay over the tactics of those they entrusted to govern. More than 900,000 people’s signatures were gathered on the recall petition of Governor Walker. There was a decided sense of the people pushing pack.

We need more Wisconsins – not recalls, per se, but spirited public engagement to reclaim the public square for fair and robust debate. Neither side has all the answers on the urgent challenges that we face. We share the same interests. It should not be this hard to listen to each other.

Kurt Shillinger is a former political reporter for The Christian Science Monitor. He covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Boston Globe and was the security studies research fellow for the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg from 2005 – 2008.

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