"At Long Last... No Decency?"

Photographer: Harold Gauer, 1954
Milwaukee Public Library

A pictorial bit of Wisconsin history.

Then, as now, it's history with plenty of impact beyond the state.

From the library record for this photo:

Exterminator Ed Batzner and volunteer worker Thelma Windrow at Bat[z]ner's place of business... The photographer explains: 'A campaign to recall US Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin involved the circulation of recall peititions by volunteers organized under the slogan 'Joe Must Go!' One of the groups supporting this activity called itself the 'Mothers March on McCarthy.' Leroy Gore, a small town (Sauk City, Wis.) Republican newspaper editor, started the movement and headed the state-wide activity, but much of the work centered in Milwaukee. During this 'McCarthy Era' the recall generated much heat, vituperation, even fear. It was considered courageous to circulate in strange neighborhoods and at night with this highly controversial proposition. The photo was arranged as evidence that the representatives of both points of view could meet face to face, the shop-keeper with his pro-Joe signs and the lady with her clipboard of petitions.'

Trying to keep up with the current Wisconsin story—and related power grabs around the country—I was looking for material on the ultra-Right think tanks behind legislation Republican governors are inflicting on their states.

That was a week ago, and I came upon this.

Professor Cronon asserts his political independence, his non-membership in a union, and his interest in seeing legislation improved by input from different sides. His concern was about legislation being written by interests outside the state—and outside public scrutiny.

And he was concerned about rubber-stamping:

If it has seemed to you while watching recent debates in the legislature that many Republican members of the Senate and Assembly have already made up their minds about the bills on which they're voting, and don't have much interest in listening to arguments being made by anyone else in the room, it's probably because they did in fact make up their minds about these bills long before they entered the Capitol chambers. You can decide for yourself whether that's a good expression of the "sifting and winnowing" for which this state long ago became famous.

He ends with this—

One conclusion seems clear: what we've witnessed in Wisconsin during the opening months of 2011 did not originate in this state, even though we've been at the center of the political storm in terms of how it's being implemented. This is a well-planned and well-coordinated national campaign, and it would be helpful to know a lot more about it.

Let's get to work, fellow citizens.

Dr. Cronon's next public exercise of citizenship: a March 22
op-ed, "Wisconsin's Radical Break."

The actions of Scott Walker and the GOP have been openly radical—so much so, writes Dr. Cronon, that

Mr. Walker's conduct has provoked a level of divisiveness and bitter partisan hostility the likes of which have not been seen in this state since at least the Vietnam War. Many citizens are furious at their governor and his party, not only because of profound policy differences, but because these particular Republicans have exercised power in abusively nontransparent ways that represent such a radical break from the state's tradition of open government.

Perhaps that is why — as a centrist and a lifelong independent — I have found myself returning over the past few weeks to the question posed by the lawyer Joseph N. Welch during the hearings that finally helped bring down another Wisconsin Republican, Joe McCarthy, in 1954: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

This runs in the NYT; next thing you know, the Wisconsin GOP submits a state records request —demanding the contents of the professor's University e-mail account, on the pretext that they are entitled to review the e-mails of a "government official."

Dr. Cronon had used a private account for private exercise of citizenship. His initial response to the GOP is included in this report, along with a later observation—

I worried for a while that my New York Times op-ed on "Wisconsin's Radical Break" might have gone too far in drawing a carefully limited parallel between the current tactics of the Republican Party in Wisconsin and those of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s...but since the Republican Party seems intent on offering evidence to support that comparison, I guess I should just let their words and actions speak for themselves.

While the Wisconsin GOP was going after a history professor, its members elected to offices of public trust got busy defying a court order.

In his NYT piece, Dr. Cronon observed that, while Walker and McCarthy are not equivalent in politics and historical periods in office, there is a similar arrogance in responding to disagreement by attacking opponents.

And the professor noted this piece of political history—

McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin's citizens have not.

McCarthy was all about intimidating enemies, until he finally overreached enough to be deprived of his national platform. Even so, two involved Milwaukee citizens were willing in 1954 to show it was desirable to have different sides talking calmly.

And when McCarthy first ran for Senate in 1946, he did so in a social and economic landscape where his campaign literature was union-printedWisconsin Historical Society
Campaign mailer: A brief news and editorial history of Judge Joe McCarthy, regular Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate