Tommy Thompson Gunner
GILBERT, CRAIG
Tommy Thompson Gunner by Craig Gilbert Bummed out by another can't-do candidacy, miffed that his "battleground" state got bumped from the battle plan, Tommy Thompson took a stunning home-stretch...
...He even made Bob Dole's veep list, a helpless waiting game he compared to "roasting on a spit...
...His social issues are crime and welfare, not school prayer...
...This is partly a pose, of course: What politician cheerfully admits to being an ideologue...
...Thus, in a purely constitutional sense, he may be the most powerful governor in the country...
...I am not an ideologue," he writes...
...The Thompson tenure in Wisconsin—chronicled in his new book, Power to the People—has been epoch-making: the end of the welfare entitlement...
...Thompson is, above everything else, an activist...
...Not Barry Goldwater...
...state-imposed caps on local school spending...
...He knew that welfare was a huge issue in the high-benefit state of Wisconsin...
...If those comments speak loudly about the Dole campaign, they say a lot about Thompson, too: a prideful, pull-no-punches politician with a penchant for pummeling the opposition...
...After Milwaukee archbishop Rembert Weakland criticized his welfare overhaul on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post, an indignant Thompson demanded an apology and told the prelate to "read his Bible...
...Tommy Thompson Gunner by Craig Gilbert Bummed out by another can't-do candidacy, miffed that his "battleground" state got bumped from the battle plan, Tommy Thompson took a stunning home-stretch shot at the top of the ticket...
...But it's also consistent with the relish they bring to being in charge and in control of a large enterprise...
...I've told them I've been disappointed," Thompson said, "but they have stopped talking to me as of about a week ago...
...a massive state buy-down of local school property taxes...
...The culture war is divisive, and Thompson is almost Clintonesque in his drive for affirmation, his wish to be embraced across political fault lines, and his desire to appeal simultaneously to historically contentious constituencies...
...Have you shared this with the Dole people...
...But it is more or less true to the man, a career politician once sneered at by journalists, academics, and ruling Democrats, an elastic, flexible, practical, slightly unpredictable student of power...
...Boosterism has done for Thompson what good-natured optimism did for Ronald Reagan: expand his personal appeal beyond his partisan base...
...one is Wisconsin's bountiful economy, for which the governor claims some credit...
...Craig Gilbert is a political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel...
...and a revolution in the possibilities and power of the governor's office...
...After all, the power is flowing their way...
...In speeches, he often invites his opponents to just "get out of the way...
...The head of the state's Democratic party said his IQ was "smaller than my bra size...
...just a decade or so ago, Thompson was a small-town Wisconsin pol with a bad haircut, a bad nickname ("Dr...
...The awe-inspiring speaker...
...He is the state's first enduring, high-profile Republican politician in 30 years...
...Despite his record as a tax-cutter, Thompson pushed a local sales-tax hike to build a new ballpark for the Milwaukee Brewers...
...During Thompson's tenure, the office of governor has only become more appealing and powerful across the country, as states assert their influence over welfare and other federal programs...
...In a party with unpopular national standard-bearers like Newt Gingrich, success stories like Thompson's scream out for study...
...When Thompson started running on welfare ten years ago, he was out in front of opinion leaders, but not voters...
...My solutions didn't always fit the doctrine of the Heritage Foundation," he tells us, "and I don't litter my speeches with all the buzzwords or the philosophies of Edmund Burke or Friedrich Hayek...
...In other words, the executive can legislate...
...I thought George Bush's campaign was probably the poorest-run presidential campaign," the governor of Wisconsin told Don Imus on his October 18 radio show...
...The other boon to Thompson has been the state's extraordinary gubernatorial veto...
...So is a curious but telling anecdote in Power to the People about how he got hooked on politics...
...Ideology may be good for, well, ideas, but "it may not work in the real world at a given time...
...If one of these governors gets elected president someday, you will wonder how much relish he will bring to devolution, if it's his power that's devolving...
...For ambitious, action-oriented Republican governors like Thompson, devolution is no doubt consistent with a certain ideological tradition...
...And there is almost no political downside to being a welfare-reformer today...
...All of you thought I was gonna fall flat on my face," Thompson told writers and editors at the Milwaukee Journal years later...
...under this Republican governor, state spending has gone up faster than inflation...
...It is the issue Wisconsin voters most associate him with...
...How does a Republican deliver on an aggressive conservative agenda in a famously "progressive" state—and stay popular...
...He is the Republican least likely to commit Gingrich's mistake of getting way out in front of public opinion and ceding the rhetorical center to the enemy...
...A good listener, Thompson figured that out before most others...
...Not exactly a young Republican's role model, but something that appealed to Thompson more: a figure of power, a larger-than-life tough guy...
...As solicitous as he can be, Thompson also has an arrogant streak...
...During a senior-year college internship on Capitol Hill, one figure impressed him more than all the others, a commanding political presence with a forceful, straight-talking style "that took over the room when he spoke...
...It is not only his source of national identity...
...He slashed benefits when he got in, but later poured new money into day-care and training and support services, making his brand of welfare reform look almost liberal compared with plans hatched later by a GOP Congress...
...the arrival of large-scale gambling in Wisconsin...
...Today he is the country's second-most senior governor, the father of state-based radical welfare reform, and a legitimate if longshot presidential prospect...
...Didn't think I could govern...
...That's vintage Thompson...
...In Power To The People, ideology is a bad word...
...His approach to governing couldn't be less laissez-faire...
...In Thompson's case, the answers lie partly in his personal style and partly in his agenda, neither one of which is classically conservative...
...To his doubters, he was dull of mind and thick of tongue, a bush-league lawyer-legislator whose exuberant ambition far outstripped his political, intellectual, and oratorical talent...
...the first religious-school voucher law (now in court...
...It has taken him in a few liberal directions, like buying up large wilderness tracts for preservation...
...Two other things have been immensely helpful to Thompson's career...
...I'm a builder," he loves to say, and he is: a road builder, a prison builder, a stadium builder, a party builder, an image builder, an empire builder...
...Thanks to a constitutional quirk and its expansive interpretation by recent courts, the governor can rewrite legislation by creatively deleting sentences and words and numbers to render new phrases and new sentences and new meaning...
...It was the least popular thing he has ever done and, revealingly, the one he has spent the most political capital on...
...I'm a doer...
...Thompson happens to be a pro-life Catholic, but among his governing priorities, abortion ranks somewhere beneath recycling...
...During his tenure, it has served him politically like nothing else...
...Thompson has carefully cultivated his own power as governor, appreciates the unique command and authority and respect a governor enjoys—the next best thing to the Oval Office for an American politician— and has made it clear he regards such career options as senator or cabinet secretary as rather slavish in comparison...
...Even on his most popular crusades, Thompson has been careful and incremental in advancing his agenda...
...The business editor of the state's largest daily lambasted his "high-decibel, low-IQ rhetoric...
...It was union boss Jimmy Hoffa...
...That boosterism, too, knows no ideology...
...Thompson in his book: "I am a pro-business governor...
...or put another way, he's been able to cut a few taxes without slashing popular programs...
...The men and woman running these "laboratories of democracy" are having the time of their lives...
...Thanks to years of uninterrupted growth, Thompson has been able to pay for new programs without tax increases...
...Bill Clinton in De Pere, Wisconsin, on Labor Day: "Let's say the Democrats are pro-business and pro-labor...
...His activism has taken him in conservative directions, like cutting corporate taxes and making welfare recipients work...
...Imus asked...
...Thompson is obsessed by state rankings and intensely competitive about Wisconsin's standing, whether measured in jobs or business starts or Rose Bowls or the cranberry crop...
...In his 1994 landslide, he became the first Republican to carry the city of Milwaukee in a governor's race in nearly 50 years and helped his party end a quarter-century of futility by wresting control of the state assembly...
...Before his sweeping W-2 welfare overhaul came a long series of highly publicized but very limited experiments...
...A Republican rival called him a "two-bit hack...
...Upon returning from Washington I enrolled in law school at the University of Wisconsin, determined to run for political office someday...
...It seemed as if we were compelled to listen...
...No"), and a bad rap (shrill, right-wing obstructionist...
...And a pro-union governor...
...Not Bobby Kennedy...
...Exit polls showed he got more than half the union vote, and precinct returns suggested he got a third of Milwaukee's black vote...
...He has used his bionic veto thousands of times, and with a certain disconcerting swagger...
...Even after ten years of Thompson, Wisconsin remains a high-tax, high-service state...
...an explosion of prison-building...
...He spoke without notes for forty-five minutes, and none of us missed a word...
...To activism, pragmatism, and populism, another "ism" can be added: boosterism...
...And I think this is a close second...
Vol. 2 • November 1996 • No. 9
