9UNP0210SD_James_Conant_WordPress

- Such a terrific audience. Thanks, everyone, for coming this evening. I'm Margaret Lewis the executive director of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. And we're so pleased to have you all here for the second event in our fall series of community conversations on Getting to Purple: Beyond the Red and Blue of Partisan Politics. And tonight we're so pleased to have Dr. James Conant who will share his ideas for bridging political divides in his talk: Wisconsin as American's Laboratory of Democracy, What Elements of Our Past Speak to Future Successes? If you're joining us for the first time this is a little bit of a chance to learn something about the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. We are an independent, nonprofit organization that's been around since 1870 and we'd love to have each of you as a member. The Wisconsin Academy's mission is to bring to the public the very best of our leading thinkers in the state and beyond to shed light on important issues in a wide range of topics in the sciences, arts and letters, thus, our name. 

We try to offer the very best knowledge available in a respectful, civil environment. On the table outside the theatre, you can pick up a season schedule or take a copy of our latest magazine with Jamie Thompson on the front. We have a two day celebration of the tenth anniversary of the discovery stem cell research coming up this November on the 18th and 19th. And you'll, I'm sure, enjoy that opportunity to come to another free event at the overture. But also the magazine will let you know about other programs throughout the year. Very important, we want to hear from you. You all received, I think, an evaluation, purple evaluation form on your way in. We want to know what you think of this program, what you think other programs that you might like to hear about. So I hope you'll please fill those out and drop them off on your way out. One more thing, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this series and other Academy evening events that allow us to continue to offer these free to the public. 

The Pleasant Rowland Foundation, the Madison Community Foundation, the Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm of the Capital Times, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the UW Madison Chancellor's Office and the Wisconsin Idea Project, the M&I Foundation, the John and Sally Mielke Family Fund, the University Bookstore for donating Dr. Conant's book as a door prize tonight. So if you haven't filled out a door prize card, I hope you do that. We draw those tomorrow and send you the results by email so please leave your email address. And I'd also like to thank our in-kind contributors: Jeff Mayers, President of WisPolitics and Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspapers Association, for assistance in publicizing this series and our cartoon contest. Other media partners who help make this program available around the state are Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Eye, Cable Channel 12 and Portal Wisconsin. Please note that as part of our purple series we invite you to participate in this cartoon caption contest by visiting our website at www. wisconsinacademy. org and it will take you right to a spot where you can vote for which of these captions that you like best and the winner will be announced at the next academy evening presentation next week. I would now like to introduce Laurie Dies, the Academy's Director of Special Events, who will introduce our speaker. 

Thanks again for coming. 
(applause)
 
- Thank you, Margaret, and thank you everyone for joining us tonight. Regarding tonight's program, there will be time for questions after Dr. Conant's presentation. Dr. James Conant is a professor of government and politics in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University. Professor Conant received his PhD in political science at UW Madison and joined the faculty at George Mason University in 1996. Dr. 

Conant began his professional career in Wisconsin state government where he worked in the Office of the Governor and the State Budget Office. Dr. Conant's most recent book, Wisconsin Politics and Government: America's Laboratory of Democracy, is part of a series on politics and governments in the 50 states. Prior to joining the faculty at George Mason University, Professor Conant was a member of the faculties at Rutgers University, New York University and the University of Oklahoma. From 1989 to 1991 he was a visiting associate professor at the La Follette institute at UW Madison. We are so glad to have Jim back in Madison tonight to join us in a great evening. It is my great pleasure to welcome Dr. James Conant. 
(applause)

- It's always nice to be in Madison and especially to have an opportunity to speak to a distinguished group like this. I want to thank the academy for the invitation. We've had, the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters has been an important contributor to my work and particularly to this book. In 1992 I was invited to be a summer scholar in residence. And part of the benefit of doing that was that the Evjue Foundation provided a grant to support my work that summer. So the relationship between the Academy and my work is long-standing and important. And in the acknowledgements of the book the Academy is listed literally in the second sentence. And along with the Academy I acknowledge Carol -- who was an early supporter of my proposal to do a book about Wisconsin and, in fact, informed me about the opportunity to be a summer scholar in residence. And Carol's continued to be a wonderful supporter of my work. In fact, after the book was published, Carol lined up an opportunity for me to speak to the Vantage Point Group, and it was a marvelous opening opportunity not only to present my work but also to have a series of wonderful questions thrown at me. 

So I hope at the end of the presentation you'll join in and help enrich the context in which I hope we're working. In addition, I've had other entities that you're probably familiar with, the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Post-Secondary Education, La Follette School, Wisconsin Alumni association, the State Budget Office and UW Madison undergraduates in Steve King's class, listen to my presentations, and equally important or more important to me is that I've had the benefit of having the questions that they've posed and I'm looking forward to a continuation of that dialog. The principal source of my talk this evening is my book Wisconsin Politics and Government: America's Laboratory of Democracy. It was actually published in 2006. I had most of the book done in 2002, but I had an editor who kept insisting that I expand the book. He wanted more and more and more and it was already a 450 page book when he asked me to provide more and more and more. So that went on for another three years and I finally said that's it. Either you publish it in this form or not. So you may notice that there's much more in the 20th century than there is in the 21st century, and I'm sure that in the second round I'll do some updating of it. I've had the benefit, in the last couple weeks as I prepared to come and give this presentation, of having interviews by telephone with people that still work in state government and elective offices and administrative offices and also people at the university. 

And I want to tell you that I very much appreciate the long-standing contacts that I've had with people in Wisconsin government. When I worked in state government the overriding impression that I came away with was that Wisconsin was a rich source of talent and a lot of that talent was in state government and that the people were exceptionally committed to the excellent provision of public service. And I don't know that that's still the case because I don't have day-to-day contact with people in government but I hope that it is and believe it is. With the focus of this series on the color purple I thought I ought to start with the color of the states. And, of course, during a presidential election cycle we are trained to think of the states as either red states or blue states. And it's not that these colors are unimportant, certainly when you're thinking about decisions that are made every four years in the election of a president it probably isn't an exaggeration to say that in terms of government and politics it's the single most important decision that people make in a four year cycle, who are we going to vote for for president. And we also know that the television commentators and pollsters talk about the red and blue states as being essentially fixed and permanently divided. Red states for republican, blue states for democrat. But we also know that the election often boils down to red/blue states or blue/red states. In other words, red/blue states being states that are expected to vote republican where the voting margin is likely to be close. 

Or blue/red states where the expectation is that the state will go democratic but might, in fact, turn out to be a red state. And what I was thinking about in the colors of the state is whether that means Wisconsin is a purple state. In other words, if you blend red and blue or you blend blue and red does it come out purple? And of course Wisconsin is on the list of states where it is expected to be a swing state where much of the attention will be focused. So I think that that is in some sense a nice position to hold because you know that the candidates will give lots of attention to this state and its voters. In addition to thinking about states in terms of electoral map or presidential electoral map, I'd like to ask you to think about states in a different way, and particularly to think about the extent at which the states have approximated the democratic ideal. And the democratic ideal in our political heritage was articulated first, I think, and most importantly, by Abraham Lincoln. And you may remember these words from the Gettysburg address. He wanted to be sure that the government of the people, by the people and for the people did not perish from the earth. And that's been in academic studies an important touchstone for thinking about what democracy means and how we might understand it. 

And that model, the model of democracy or the ideal of democracy, is often contrasted with government of the few and government by the few. And I want to give you an example from the series that my book is a part of. There are now 28 books out on the states. They were all published by the University of Nebraska Press all under the same editor and editorial board. And I'm going to pick two states, Wisconsin one and Arkansas the other, and I think we could say that at best Arkansas, through most of its political tradition, has a weak democracy and for most of Wisconsin's political history it's been a very strong democracy. So let me tell you what the author of the book on Arkansas, Diane Blair, had to say on Arkansas. Said this is a state with fiercely independent people. People with lots of energy and talent but their governmental experience has, at its best, been a relationship of abuse between a state and its people. That was the best that she could say existed between the state government and its people. And she said, in fact, to be more accurate and to be more direct about it, the state has stood in the way of the progress of its people. 

Now her explanation for this is that Arkansas essentially was founded by a small number of families and at the time she's writing she said for most of the hundred plus years I'm writing about the state has been controlled by 200 families, tightly knit, who manage the state for their own benefit and essentially use the state tax system to collect revenues from people that were used to essentially enrich the conditions of the 200 families. Compare that with Wisconsin's experience where, in fact, the government has played an important positive role in people's lives. And, in fact, has made the quality of life an extraordinary quality of life for most of Wisconsin's people. In addition to the Lincoln definition of what constitutes democracy, Abraham Lincoln's definition. Modern political scientists have used several others criteria, again Wisconsin ranks high on these criteria. Do you have a state government that's responsive to the needs of all its citizens who are treated as political equals. At least through most of the 20th century I think the state has had that kind of government. Political scientists also like to emphasize the importance of clean politics, through most of the 20th century Wisconsin had clean politics. As you all know, early in the 21st century the problems of corruption in Wisconsin's electoral processes and legislative processes became visible in newspaper stories, and in this one in particular I remember Gaylord Nelson's comment about these problems in Wisconsin as he responded to an interviewer's questions about Wisconsin. He said I was always proud to represent Wisconsin because everyone knew it was the clean state. 

He said now we're just like everybody else. And by everybody else he meant all the other states. And he said it's a damn shame. Now part of the question that I want to deal with is whether the lights are still on in the laboratory of democracy as Wisconsin's been known and I think a core part of the modern assessment of the state and the quality of its democratic experience is whether the politics are clean or not. Another key indicator for political scientists about the health of a democracy within a state, and within governments in general, is whether there are high rates of participation in elections and in both statewide elections, and particularly in gubernatorial elections, but also in national elections, Wisconsin's average turnout, that is the number of people who are likely to participate out of the total who can participate, generally runs 10 to 20 percentage points ahead of the average of state participation. So do Wisconsinites participate in electoral politics at an exceptionally high rate? Absolutely. There are only a couple of states who come close over the 20th century to these remarkable rates of participation which I think says a lot about the commitment that the people have to good government in Wisconsin. And then last but not least, scholars emphasize the importance of having strong administrative capacity to implement the laws. So if you have a good clean legislative process and you get good laws but there's no capacity to implement is, what's the point of having the laws. 

So the scholars put quality of legislation and administration together and, again, Wisconsin, for most of the 20th century, has had an extraordinarily strong administrative capacity that, again, at least through the late 1980s was the envy of people that I met in states all across the country. So I think that on Lincoln's, Abraham Lincoln's criteria, does Wisconsin have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, I think we can say yes. And on the criteria that modern political scientists use to think about the quality of a democracy in a state government or in a state in general, I think we could say yes. And in fact, I'd say that Wisconsin has been a model democratic polity for most of its 20th century experience. And as a model democratic polity within the United States federal system, served as a model for other states. I think that the explanation for Wisconsin's extraordinary democratic energy boils down primarily to Wisconsin's progressive heritage. Now there are other factors that support that progressive heritage but the progressive heritage is what I'm going to talk about. And I understand that progressive is a word that's been used or co-opted by a variety of factions in the last few years. I'm not talking about any of those factions, I'm talking about the long-standing progressive heritage in Wisconsin. And in fact, there have been four key periods of Wisconsin progressive activity. 

In writing the book, the most important surprise in my research was that the progressive democrats set the state on what I think was a very solid democratic footing. The progressive democrats were the majority group at the time that the 1846 Constitution was developed. And I will talk about them and the problems that they encountered. Most of you know about Robert La Follette Sr. and the progressive republicans in the period 1900 to 1915. We'll talk a little more about that. Some of you probably know that Robert Sr.'s son, Phillip La Follette, was governor. First was supported by progressive republicans in the legislature and when Stalwart republicans took over the party again Phillip and his brother, who was a United States Senator at the time, formed the progressive party. And then the last section of the progressive energy, I think, was period 1958 to '86 when Gaylord Nelson and the progressive democrats really came into their own in that post-war period. And we'll talk some more about that. 

Now there's another definition of purple that might be used in Wisconsin. You'll notice that no single party has captured the progressive tradition or I should say the progressive tradition has existed in several parties. First the democratic party. Then the republican party. Then in an independent party, the progressive party. And in the post World War II period I think the progressive heritage moved over to or back to, depending on what historical period you want to look at, the democratic party. Now, when you think about the progressive tradition, I think there are two things that provide a basis for sort of distilling one's thinking about it. And the first is what I call the core progressive assumption. The assumption of the progressives, throughout the period of time that I'm talking about, really believed that economic, political and social and cultural progress was possible for all of the people of the state. Not some, not a few, not a part but for all of the people. 

And their core belief was that government should serve the interests of the people as a whole or the community as a whole not just the interests of a few. Now how did that set of assumptions and believes play out at the time that Wisconsin was searching for statehood and what kinds of problems did the progressive democrats encounter in 1846? Well there were two sets of problems that I want to highlight, political and economic problems. The first was that in 1846 Wisconsin was not a state, it was a territory. And the fact that Congress had given large parts of the Wisconsin territory to Michigan, you know what part of Wisconsin territory I'm talking about, and to Illinois, generated a firestorm within a state where the territorial government and most of the people had been very reluctant to push toward statehood. And that push toward statehood left Wisconsin territory lose more of its territory was essentially void by the Jacksonian movement in which a special emphasis was put on the need to protect the common man. And as you'll recall in historical terms, women have not been associated, particularly with the literature of politics and government, at least not until after the 1920s. So all of the Jackson literature dealt with the common man and this especially protecting the common man from large economic interests, most importantly banks. At the time, there was also a nationwide recession and, most importantly for Wisconsin progressive democrats thinking about how to draft a Constitution, many of the states were in bankruptcy and many local governments were in bankruptcy because they had invested the credit of the state with railroads and with canal builders and many of those railroads failed and many of the canal's failed which bankrupted the state and the local governments who had also lent their credits to those large economic enterprises. So how do the democratic progressives in the 1846 Constitutional Convention deal with those problems? 

The first thing that they tried to do was to provide protections to prevent the corruption of the state by large economic interest. And the second was they tried to provide economic protections for individual citizens. In terms of the protections designed to prevent the corporation of the state by large economic interests, they had four key elements that they wanted to see in the state Constitution. The first was an absolutely strict provision that said the state's credit will never be used by a private corporation. The second was that the state would not be allowed to borrow for infrastructure improvements. Think of railroads that collapsed and canals that failed. Banks would not be allowed to incorporate in the state. And Supreme Court justices would be elected by the people. And the latter one, in particular, was a passionately held belief by the progressive democrats who thought if the people of the state as a whole could elect Supreme Court justices the Supreme Court could stay connected to the common man. And if there was an appointment process they were worried that the connection between the people and the state Supreme Court would be lost. 

You'll see that I have a star by banks were not incorporated. It turned out that that was one of the two most controversial provisions in the 1846 Constitutional document that the progressive democrats would forward. Now when it came to economic protection for citizens progressive democrats wanted to make sure that the household was protected in case of bankruptcy. In other words, what the historical record showed was that, particularly for farmers, when there was a bad year and farmers lost all of their income, there wasn't any income, they would lose their home, what the progressives wanted to do was protect farmers from a bad year and the loss of everything they wanted at least for the farm families to be protected in terms of the home. Gambling was also prohibited. There was a widely held belief that gambling was not only a corruption of families but a corruption of the society. And last but not least, the progressive democrats, and this turned out to be the most controversial thing in the proposed Constitution, wanted married women to be allowed to keep property after they were married. And Edward Witten, one of the progressive democrats' most ardent critics, said that he was absolutely certain that if this provision remained in the Constitution it would be the end of the marriage contract and would lead to the destruction of the social society. So these things were strongly held. They seemed like a foreign notion to us now but think of how far we've come and how much progress we've made. 

Now, in fact, because of this provision that banks would not be incorporated and the provision that would allow married women to keep property after marriage, the initial Constitution drafted by progressive democrats was turned down by the people in a vote in 1847. And new Constitutional convention was set up. Many of the original members of this group refused to serve in the second Constitutional convention. But the Constitution was largely the same with the expectation of a provision about whether banks could be incorporated was to be put to a vote of the people after the Constitution was approved and the married women's property clause was dropped but would be allowed to come up in legislative consideration if there was a will to do so. The second major period of progressive energy and experimentation in the state took place between 1900 and 1915. And I'm sure that those of you that know about the progressive heritage are familiar with this. There were a set of problems that Robert La Follette and the progressive republicans had to deal with. The first was a political problem and for those of you that don't know, Wisconsin's electoral and legislative processes were controlled by a machine. And the machine consisted of the timber industries, the railroad barons and the Stalwart republicans in the legislature. And one scholar who's written a good deal about Wisconsin government and politics says that in Wisconsin, given the talent of the people who are involved in those industries in the republican party, you had the perfection of machine politics. 

What did that mean? Well, one of the things that allowed the perfection of machine politics was extensive patronage. So if you wanted a job in state government you had to be part of the winning team which was the machine team. If you weren't, don't expect to have a position in Wisconsin government. Another important problem that Robert La Follette Sr. and the progressive republicans faced was an economic problem. The country was undergoing rapid industrialization. It not only meant that there was a movement of people from the rural communities into the cities but it also meant that in the process of rapid industrialization you had cities growing up over night and in the development of industrial production you had an extraordinary number of accidents which leads into the social problems. If you look at the data that's been collected on what happened in the early years, particularly the early years from the 1900 in this rapid period of industrialization, hundreds of thousands of people were injured each year across the US in industrial accidents. And I don't just mean cuts. 

I mean loss of limbs, loss of life, severe injuries that made productive life impossible. So when you look at the all of the combination of factors that La Follette and the progressive republicans were attempting to deal with, you can see the list is formidable. So what experiments did they run to try to address that extraordinary list of problems. Well first Robert La Follette and the progressive republicans had to win control of the progressive party. And La Follette tried for a decade to win. And, in fact, in the 1898 primary election was believed to have won the primary by quite a large margin but somehow the votes didn't show that. So it took him four tries before he became governor and before the progressive republicans pushed the machine self-described as the Stalwart republicans aside for a period of time. But you can see that in 1901 and 1905, the period in which Robert La Follette was governor, the achievements were actually relatively modest. The Legislative Reference Bureau was created. No state had a Legislative Reference Bureau where expertise was provided to individual legislators who wanted to draft legislation or do analysis. 

Civil service law in 1905. Wisconsin was one of the first three states to have a civil service law. Again to us this might seem remarkable but in that era and that time an extraordinary achievement. And again to try to continue to break the power of the machine, Robert La Follette pushed forward the open primary law which was unique among the states at the time. And it's a contribution that Leon Epstein, who was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin for many years and whose book read when I was in grad school, said he believed was Robert La Follette's most important accomplishment. The open primary law means, of course, whether you're registered as a democrat or a republican, you can cross party lines and vote in the primary that you want to vote in. Now following La Follette were Francis McGovern and James O. Davidson. I'm sorry La Follette also managed to bring in regulations of railroads. Here he's working the machine again and trying to contain the interest of the machine but Francis McGovern and James O. 

Davidson brought in the reviser statute laws. If you think of legislation being passed each year you might ask, well, is it collected and codified anywhere? Before this statute was provided, it wasn't. It was a series of individual laws that essentially had to be discovered somehow by people and their legislators. And the progressives wanted to government to be transparent and established this reviser of statutes law so there was ongoing expertise to codify the state's laws. In addition, what I think is the most important of these early contributions was the passage of the workman's compensation law. Wisconsin was the first to say that if someone was maimed or injured on the job we shouldn't blame that person and we shouldn't banish them to permanent poverty and their family to permanent poverty. We should provide some support as a state to people, who in their productive life, have been severely injured. This was very controversial at the time. But fortunately an important segment of the business community supported it and was able to help push it through. 

Additionally, Wisconsin was the first state to have an income tax. The US government was soon to follow in the creation of an income tax. But Wisconsin pioneered this for the nation. And that income tax was much desired by the progressives primarily because they wanted to set up the shared tax system and they needed a new revenue source to do it. What was the basis for the share tax system, what was it used for? To support counties and municipal governments. So the state was collecting the money but giving most of it back to municipal and county governments. You see the State Life Insurance Fund, The State Teachers Retirement Fund, labor laws to protect women and children in the workplace, and campaign finance reform. Wisconsin was first second or third in all of those. Again pioneering new ways to deal with the problems of industrialization that other states and the United States government eventually adopted as well. 

In his first visit to Wisconsin during the progressive era in 1910, in fact his visit to Madison, Teddy Roosevelt said that Wisconsin, in his mind, was a state that should make the entire nation proud and that it was, in fact, pioneering the trail along which all the states in the national government would follow because Wisconsin was learning how to deal with this extraordinary transformation of society during its industrialization. Teddy Roosevelt came back two years later and after his visit to Wisconsin a second time offered this thought about what he had seen in Wisconsin thanks to the movement for genuinely democratic government which senator La Follette, La Follette had moved from governor to US Senate, led to overwhelming victory in Wisconsin, that state has literally become a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole. And more than any other single figure, given the fact that Teddy Roosevelt had been president, his articulation of the extraordinary role Wisconsin was playing for the nation as a whole and for the states in general really led to a rapid development of Wisconsin as a name plate across the nation as the place where really important experimental legislation and institutional innovation was taking place. The third period where the progressive energy was most visible was during the period where Phillip La Follette was party leader and then governor. First with the support of progressive republicans and then when the Stalwart republicans reclaimed the progressive party, Phillip and his brother moved out and formed a third party, an independent party called the progressive party. So this period runs from 1928 to '46. The progressive party was disbanded after the war. What problems did Phillip La Follette and the progressive republicans and eventually the progressive party face? Well if you look at the starting number 1928 you know that the next year the financial system essentially breaks down in the US. Which led to the failure of the stock market. 

Now if this sounds familiar you could change the numbers here but that's what they were dealing with. And when Franklin Roosevelt came to office where would he look for solutions to the problems of the Depression and all of its consequences at the national level and across the states, it was Wisconsin. That was the first place he looked. So what did Phillip La Follette have to deal with? Well, first and foremost a struggle with the Stalwart republicans within the republican party. And then second economic problems. Imagine a circumstance where 25% of the workforce is unemployed and think of all the consequences that that would bring. I hope that's not what will happen to us as the meltdown in our financial system plays out. But we've seen this happen in other countries. And social problems. 

If people are unemployed and have no source of income it's not just the person that was working that bears the brunt of the consequences, it's also the family. And of course most susceptible to the meltdown of the economy were many of the elderly who had no pension and no form of support and the families of the unemployed who needed food, shelter and clothing. So what experiments did Phillip La Follette and the progressive republicans run? Well, they created an old age pension system for the elderly. Now to us this may seem odd but Wisconsin was the first state to create this and, of course, Franklin Roosevelt took it and used it with the help of some people from Wisconsin who were part of the crafting of this policy in the first place. The Unemployment Compensation Act. Wisconsin was the first. Some members of the business community thought having unemployment was a terrible idea. Fortunately, some of the progressive elements of the business community thought it was a really important idea. Wisconsin pioneered unemployment compensation for the nation and a few years later unemployment compensation was adopted as a national program. 

Wisconsin, also under Phillip La Follette and the progressive republicans, established the Emergency Relief Act. This was not common. Most relief was provided by charities. Wisconsin took a huge gamble and specifically Phillip La Follette and the progressive republicans in providing direct cash relief for those who had no cash and no way to buy food. In addition, public works programs were created and among those programs were a forestry program where an attempt to reclaim and rebuild Wisconsin's forests was put underway. In addition, La Follette and the progressives established a state owned power system copied by many of the states. And a taxation of dividends on business and you can imagine how controversial that was. The US government will soon follow as will many of the states. The third period of progressive energy shifts to the democratic party. The republican party, at left itself described, was under the control of the Stalwart republicans. 

In the post-war period the progressive party, the independent party, dissolved. Where was the progressive tradition to find a home? Gaylord Nelson, William Proxmire, Pat Lucey and others who helped to reestablish the democratic party in Wisconsin took on the progressive tradition and had a set of important problems to deal with. And among the earliest of those problems was a very rapidly expanding K to 12 school population. I had a chance to talk to Governor Nelson, Senator Nelson, on a couple of occasions and I asked him what the most difficult decision he had to make in politics was and he looked at me as though you don't know? And I waited and he said the sales tax, of course. And if you look at the history there was a tax commission appointed to offer recommendations as to how the state could raise more money to support K to 12 schools. That commission recommended a sales tax. Governor Nelson came out and said yes, I support it. Then came a barrage of criticism then he said no, I don't support it. 

And eventually decided that he had to support it. And as he was telling me that the most difficult choice he made in his political life was to bring in the sales tax I knew exactly what I meant because I knew something about the background that he was talking about. In addition, during this period, particularly in the early '70s, there were a host of court cases that dealt with the question of whether states were supporting schools and doing it in an equitable fashion. And the bottom up view was that wealthy districts could support excellent schools, poor directs had trouble supporting minimal schools. And the US Supreme Court in Serrano vs. Priest actually took the position that it was the state's responsibility to try to provide an equal opportunity for every child in education. So you can see the way in which the state not only influences the national government but in which branches of the US government influence the state. Additionally, the demands on local governments were expanded rapidly. The growing awareness of poverty was evolving. Efforts were made within the intergovernmental system to sort out which level of government should support what function and who should have the revenue for it. 

And of course in terms of economic problems, particularly in the early '70s and '80s, we were really first encountering global competition. At the end of World War II there was only one standing economy of any consequence, that was the US, but by the late '70s, early '80s, Japan, Germany and many other countries' economies had been rebuilt and global competition was really beginning in a serious way. So what did Gaylord Nelson and the progressive democrats do in this period of time. Well, I've talked about the first solution was to pass the sales tax so that schools could be supported. When Patrick Lucey came to office as governor in 1970 he actually campaigned on a pledge to increase the income tax for wealthiest members of the state. He's the last governor, so far as I know, to offer such a promise, but he used the benefits of the proceeds to support local governments. Which is again where most of the money went into the shared tax distribution system and back to local governments. And the shared tax system itself, that is state raised money going back to local governments, was modified so that not only was there consideration of need but a part of the allocation that went back to local governments was based on criteria called need-based criteria. School aides was expanded and expanded dramatically during this period of time. School aides was simply a per capita based system and was evolved and changed so that there was a needs-based component to it. 

And another really important factor during this period of time was the state took over services that were not related to the property tax but which local governments were paying and that was public relief in mental health services in particular. Voter registration requirements were updated. Campaign finance reforms were passed. The court system was reorganized, it really became a state court system. Jobs and education training programs were established for the national AFDC program, and a state budget which had gone out of balance during the -- years was put back into structural balance by democratic governor Anthony Earl. Now I was worried that I was going to go too long in my presentation so I shortened this last section perhaps more than I ought to but I wanted to talk about the evolution of progressive tradition. During Tommy Thompson's term 14 years, 13 years as governor, I think the most important experiment that continued in Wisconsin continued under his offices which was the Welfare to Work Program. And when I say experiment there was a new provision that hadn't existed before which governor Thompson got the legislature to agree which is essentially a two year and out provision. It said no one can be on welfare for more than two years. What Governor Thompson might have done in another state that did not have the progressive tradition was to abandon the work to welfare component and the training and educational support that Anthony Earl had built up over the years and was working in five counties, governor Thompson expanded to a statewide system. 

If you look at the Work to Welfare Programs that most of the states passed it was essentially a term limit on the amount of time anyone could collect welfare and that was the end. I think governor Thompson, to his credit, said we can't expect people who have lost jobs or have had bankruptcies in their families or children who are ill to just suddenly leap into the workforce, we've got to provide support for children and we've got to provide job training so that people have the skills and knowledge needed to go back into the workforce. On the other hand, during this period of time 1987 to 2001 some things happened that really were outside the progressive boundaries that had been established from 1846 on. You might remember to protect families, the progressive democrats wanted a provision in the Constitution that prevented not only gambling but any state connection to gambling. Well, you might remember that Governor Thompson supported the elimination of the restriction on gambling. And we now have state sponsored gambling. That's far outside the premises that the progressive tradition incorporated. In addition, we had some corrosion or corruption of the electoral processes. We learned that legislative caucus staff paid by taxpayer money were assigned to run election campaigns for members of the Senate and Assembly. And for those of us who thought of Wisconsin politics like senator Nelson as squeaky clean, it was a shock to think that was happening in our institutions. 

State taxpayer money was being used to finance partisan election campaigns. In addition, it turns out that some of the taxpayer paid staff were also raising money for party purposes which was also quite a shock to, I'm sure some of in legislature, but also much of the public. And even more series, if that's possible, was the fact that some of the leaders in the legislative body were involved in, and this was both parties, in a pay to play system where if you wanted legislation to be considered you had to ante up a contribution to the party before your legislation could be considered. Not the kind of thing that you associate with Wisconsin and again as this was, the investigative journalism was uncovering this it was a great shock to all who where the big W in their heart and have a presumption about what Wisconsin politics will contain. So the corrosion in the election process and legislative process really got started during this period of time and then I think the other, perhaps most weighty thing that we have to deal with now as a state or that you all have to deal with is that the huge structural budget deficit was created. It was created through two primary actions. The school funding formula went from 50% of local need to 66%. It cost about a billion dollars a year. Governor Thompson decided that no new money would be raised to support that new legislation. So add a billion dollars a year to the expense side of the budget. 

And then between 1995 and 2001 tax revenues were cut by a billion dollars a year. So you have a $2 billion change in the condition of the state budget. Which I think the state is still struggling mightily to deal with. And to give you some sense of the scale, this is not my work, it's the work of some people connected to the university of Wisconsin Madison. The size of the current estimated structural deficit, meaning ongoing revenues and ongoing expenditures is considered by some to be so large that if the entire University of Wisconsin system was eliminated that budget deficit could not be fixed. So we're in a circumstance within state government where I think some honesty is needed about the severity of fiscal crisis the state is in. And I came to this conclusion long before the current fiscal crisis at the national level started to unfold. I think that the state's budget problems will rapidly become much more severe as they will for the national budget. And you can see the problem at the national level. We have not only campaigns that the cartoons show deal with water, we have campaigns where both of the candidates for presidency are talking about all of the additional things that they're going to do but won't use the T word, the tax word. 

They won't tell you that without new taxes they can't support the existing commitments that are made. And without a lot of additional tax revenue, new things can't be done unless lots of existing programs are going to be cut. And the state is in the same condition, I'm sorry to say. So how do we work ourselves out of the condition as a state? How do all of us who played an important role as citizens and officials in this state deal with the state's current problems and move toward restoring Wisconsin's role as the laboratory of democracy? Well, first and foremost, I think comes information and education of the progressive tradition. Steve Keen, who works for the Wisconsin Foundation and also teaches as an adjunct faculty member in the political science department, invited me to his class where interns who work in state government also get classroom time. And it was a big surprise to me to find that even though they had access to my book before I arrived, the two questions that were on their minds was Wisconsin really special? They simply couldn't believe it. And the second question they asked was if Wisconsin played such an important role in the American governmental system, how come we've never heard this before? 

And I was surprised because it hadn't occurred to me that they had never heard of the progressive tradition in Wisconsin, but they hadn't and they were hungry to hear about it. So I think information and education in the progressive tradition is going to be an important part of this in the K to 12 schools, technical schools and the certainly the University of Wisconsin system and play a role in providing that kind of information education. Additionally, I think the leaders of the two parties have to make an important decision. I'm not sure that the progressive tradition has a clear and strong home at the moment. I hope the leaders of one of the parties will make a commitment to take back the progressive tradition. Additionally, underlying the sort of the harsh partisan politics, and David Broder may have talked about this a bit, he's more optimistic about the toning down of the harsh partisanship than I am at the national level and I think he is at the state level, as well. There's a fundamental structural problem which is referred to in the academic literature and among journalists as safe seats. The majority parties, every ten years, get to redistrict the states, that is they get to redraw the boundaries for how the seats in the state legislature and in Congress are constructed. Each time the majority party is a different party, those directs are redrawn in ways that create safe seats and again in sort of academic parliaments but also in practical and political parliaments, safe seats means that your party, the majority's party has a 55-45% registration edge so that you've got a 10 point margin. So that even in bad times you will have safe seats. 

What you end up getting in this safe seat system is very few state seats in the Senate or the Assembly that are actually competitive. And the members who hold those seats know that, the interest groups know it and the parties know it. What then happens is if there's competition the competition occurs in the primary. So in the democratic primaries you might have competition to see who can move farthest left. In the republican primaries you have competition to see who can move farthest right. So if you're electing people who are standing at the opposite ends of the political continuum, you can imagine how hard it is for them to come together and find ways to not only make possible compromises in dealing with state problems but deal with those problems with energy and honesty. The recent state Supreme Court race I know has had a lot of attention in the press and I just wanted to weigh in from the progressive tradition. Remember the progressive democrats thought it was really important to have the state Supreme Court closely connected to the public and was confident that the public would understand where its interests lay. I think the WMC's role in the state Supreme Court race is not one that will over time play well for that organization or for the business community as a whole. And I hope that they'll back off of engagement in that race. 

You can also see though the way in which something that stands in opposition to what the progressive democrats thought in 1846 could now be considered a possibility. Maybe it's better to have the bar association vet candidates and have the candidates for Supreme Court appointed rather than elected. I don't think that will happen in Wisconsin. I'm certainly not recommending it. But you can see how in an historical context people's decisions about what the right thing to do can change completely. I've talked about the state structural budget deficit. It's hard for the state to be a good partner for school districts, counties and municipals if the state can't get its own finances under control. And if cuts occur, most likely, given the extraordinary commitment that's recently been made to K to 12 schools, it will be the municipals and counties that will suffer the most. The progressives, as I hope I showed here earlier, had an extraordinarily strong commitment to both schools and local governments. And literally created the income tax in part so that the state could raise money to support local governments. 

And the progressives had a simple motto, you can't have a strong state if you don't have strong local governments and strong schools. So in the progressive tradition you have a triangle with the state at the top and schools and municipal and county governments at the bottom. And just think of where the weakness is in the triangle. If any of the three parts are weak, all of the other two parts are weak. If all three parts are strong, the state as a whole is strong. And I think that still holds. In the contemporary era, partnerships and nonprofits and private organizations has become much more important. One of the remarkable things about Wisconsin civil society is there an extraordinary range of very energetic nonprofits. And I think to work our way out of problems that Wisconsin's has, nonprofits and private organizations will need to be an important part of the solution because of the talent and energy that's there. And last but not least, I think that the Wisconsin idea of connection between the state and the university needs to be reenergized. 

I think there's great talent at both ends of State Street, and I think more effective meshing and engagement between those two energies will be important. I won't try to expand on former Chancellor Wiley's Madisonian magazine article. I think he said a lot that needed to be said but what I liked most about it is that he wants the dialog to be a public dialog about the university/state connection and I hope there will be a strong and energetic dialog on that topic. 
(applause)
 
- We are going to open this up for questions. So I invite the audience, there's a microphone right down here, and I invite the audience to ask professor Conant questions relating to his speech. 
- Professor, when the Stalwart republicans were arguing against the progressive republicans in those decades, what was generally the role of the democratic party historically in those periods? 
- That's a wonderful question. If in historical terms you use the red/blue colors for Wisconsin, what you'd find is that it's mostly red. 

It's not until the post World War II period that the democratic party becomes a viable party. So literally from the time the republican party was founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, my home town, the republican party quickly came to dominate the state. The democratic party, so if my recollection serves me correctly, in the 1800s won the governorship only two times and the governorship only lasted for a two year period. So the 1800s after the republican party was founded were dominated by the republican party. Up through the time that the progressive republicans left the republican party, the republican party dominated state elections in the 20th century, as well, and really only since the end of World War II and the revival of the democratic party has there been really energetic two-party competition in the state. 
- I suppose another party that at least in the period from about 1900 to 1915 contributed to what you labeled experiments was the Wisconsin socialist party. 
- Yes. 
- From which many of these ideas originated and were promoted. But I have a question that's more contemporary. It is about the state budget. 

I'm not an accountant but I understand that it's extremely important and not widely known and not widely discussed phenomenon in Wisconsin in our state government and that has to do with the decision that was made, I don't know maybe in territorial days maybe around the first world war, I don't know when, to adopt a certain kind of approach to accounting. I suppose we're talking here about operational expenses rather than capital expenses, but there is a different way to account for state revenue and expenses, and if Wisconsin were to switch to the alternative way, I'm hoping you know the names because I don't, if we were to switch to the alternative way it would be more honest, it would be more neutral, but it would also show that we are in much, much, much worse shape than we are as a state government. So a couple of questions to you, do you happen to know what I'm talking about in terms of these two alternative state government accounting approaches? And then are any other states using the one that Wisconsin is not that maybe we should take a more public look at because this is not widely, as I said, it's not widely known nor is it widely discussed. 
- Unfortunately, when I made it through the civil service process to become a state budget analysts one didn't have to be an accountant before one become a budget analysts. But accounting is certainly become a more and more important profession and provided more important techniques and the debate about what the proper methods for accounting is within government is certainly raging across the country and we have standards boards mostly staffed by accountants who are dealing with the problem so it certainly is an important topic across the state and national level. I'm sorry I don't think I can answer it very effectively in the specific way that you're framing it. But I agree with you that the question of what accounting standards are used is a very important matter for all states. 
(applause)

- I noticed that in your description for what Wisconsin has to do to get back to where we were in the '70s, you did not include anything with campaign finance reform, and I'm surprised because I honestly don't see any way back except for campaign finance reform and so I'm wondering what your view of that is. 
- I think it's very important too. And I don't mean to say that the people of Wisconsin would benefit from turning back the clock as much as I think the progressive tradition has been the strength of the state and the core progressive assumptions and beliefs would form a good basis with dealing with current problems. And you can see that the assumptions and beliefs of the progressives worked well for dealing with the political, economic and social problems of several different eras. So I hope that what you'll take away is not that I want the clock to be turned backwards. On the one hand, I'd like Wisconsin to return to the vibrant energetic democracy it once was but I don't think the old solutions will work. Now a campaign finance reform is certainly extraordinarily important. When I was working on Governor Lucey's staff, he and some of his advisors worked very hard with legislative leaders and members of the legislature to try to improve the campaign finance laws. And you saw on the screen, I should say you may have noticed that Robert La Follette and the progressives worked very hard at establishing campaign finance requirements because one of the problems that they faced was when they thought that they would have a Stalwart republican ready to vote for them they would find that that person was either not sitting in the legislature that day or alternatively they would find that person would sit in the legislature that day but then would have railroad passes to travel the state for free and would have cash and meals to go along with it. So if you're thinking about what was going on in the early 1900s you can see we still have many of those same challenges now. 

Wisconsin, again, has been an extraordinarily clean state compared to almost all of the other states. But certainly the campaign finance laws merit some additional attention and updating. 
- First of all, I'd like to thank you for telling us all the progressive story, giving us some hope and celebrating the history we have. As I look back to the progressive era, particularly the era of La Follette, Bob La Follette, there was a unity that was created in the party of farmers, small business people and workers. Very solid, very solid area to begin a unity for what's going on. Fast forward to the time we are in right now, when instead of unity we have a divisiveness among people, among their professions, among, shall we say, almost a class distinction. If we want to bring back the value of progressiveness, how do we create a unity of people to build that base again for progressive party? 
- Well, I'd offer a couple of responses. The first is that when the republican party was created it was primarily a pro-farmer/anti-slave party that evolved over time and soon starting in the mid-'70s, 1880s and 1890s was controlled by the timber industry and the railroad industry. Think of the position Robert La Follette was in as a member of the republican party who decided that he no longer wanted to operate inside that machine system. 

So the republican party was the source of party competition for a good share of the state's history and the competition was between the Stalwart republicans and the progressive republicans. So the republican party was not a party united, it was a party bitterly divided. And if you look at what it took for La Follette to become the party's nominee for governor, ten years of trying until he finally broke through and then ultimately the party was recaptured by the Stalwart republicans. And I'm using a term that they used to describe themselves. And his sons were essentially given an opportunity to go away quietly within the republican party now controlled by the Stalwarts or to form their own party. And that's what they did. So was there a unity established under the progressive banner? There certainly was. Was there unity within the republican party where this tremendous competition was taking place? No. 

Now do we have a fully united republican party now or fully united democratic party? One of the problems with being far away in Virginia is that I don't have the full contacts that many of you have. I don't have the inside stories that many of you have. We know nationally that both of the parties have some divisions but nationally most of the journalistic and academic literature talks about the six or eight major divisions within the democratic party. So I think in any era it's hard to get unity within a party. I think one of the keys to developing unity within a party is a great leader. Robert La Follette played that role, as did his son Phillip later on. Without a great leader I think it's hard for a party to unite and particularly in the modern era where there are so many vehicles by which divisions can be created. So I hope that both of the parties will have some unity and I think in the modern election we'll soon learn whether the democrat party can come together behind a candidate. It looks like the republican party is mobilizing more fully than might have been expected to support John McCain. 

- Thank you. 
- You're welcome. 
- Essentially what you said to me is be patient? 
- Yes. Well, think of La Follette. Here's what La Follette said in his autobiography at the end. To each generation a challenge is given. He waited and tried and worked for ten years to be the party's nominee. And then had six years as governor and many of his critics said got nothing done. 16 years invested in trying to make some progress against a machine and then when he went to Washington he was engaged in the same campaign. 

Think of the 25 years that he was involved in American politics, Wisconsin and the national politics, how much progress did he make? So I think the way that we need to think about it is the word you're using, patience. I think these things run in cycles. You not only need great leaders and unified parties but you need patience and persistence to address the really tough problems that this state and many of the other states have. 
- I also want to share with you one of my favorite La Follette quotes. He says that democracy is an ongoing struggle. 
- Yes, indeed. 
- Thank you. 
- You're welcome. 
- I was very interested in your talking about how people weren't schooled or trained or taught about the progressive tradition. 

But I would suggest that the problem is much deeper than just the progressive tradition. It's the whole question of what it takes to promote a vibrant democracy. I think some of the things that are written into our Constitution are no longer truly understood and I would take two examples, separation of powers and checks and balances. And in order for those to work to keep our democracy vibrant, the institutions have to play their proper roles. And I think what deteriorated in Wisconsin was the institutions of governor and legislature and the courts not playing their proper roles, and so the question comes how do you teach this in the schools even to politicians. So examples would be in the 14 years in which Tommy Thompson was governor the legislature never once overrode a veto. So what does that say about the checks and balances that the legislature should pay and hold the governor accountable. And then in terms of the breakdown of the legislative process, I had a front row seat at seeing that deterioration and it was no question that the members of the legislature knew what was going on but they would the not challenge their leaders. And one of the reasons they would not challenge their leaders is because the leaders financing their campaigns by raising more money. So this goes back to the other question of campaign finance reform. 

But I continue to be struck by the fact that people really truly do not understand dynamics of democracy and these are not being taught in the high schools. They're not being taught in political science classes. It's all about power, keeping and using power and most of time it's personal power. So how do you teach these basic questions of democracy? 
- Well, the problem is really basic and really important. The Washington Post ran a series of articles on what Americans know about their government and the basic question is can the rational voter hypothesis be upheld. 
(laughter)
 The survey research showed that, excuse me I have to swallow and think about this, only 49% of American citizens, and there were three different polls that had very similar results, only 49% of our citizens know how many branches of government the US government has. And when the survey results were reviewed many people thought there was only one branch of government. Some people thought there were four and some people thought there were six. 

How does it happen that people who are citizens in our country go through our K-12 education and system think there's one branch of government? Or how could they think there are six? So there's a really deep fundamental problem and if people don't understand just the basic institutional design of our system, how could we possibly expect them to be sophisticated analysts to essentially take a part what the candidates are saying, evaluate what they're saying and make effective judgments about what they're hearing in the campaigns. It's a long stretch. So certainly we need more education, we need better education, I think we need it earlier and what I hope is that over the next 20 years we could turn it around so that two-thirds or three-quarters of our citizens, if asked the questions how many branches of government does the US government have, would answer three. Would be most welcome. 
(applause)