HARLAN RICHARDS

September 13, 2012

Gay-Bashing by Tommy Thompson

Tommy Thompson's campaign manager created a furor when he posted a clip of Rep. Tammy Baldwin dancing at a Gay Pride event - the implication being that Baldwin's sexual orientation somehow made her unsuitable for the senate position that her and Thompson are vying for. Thompson reassigned the staff member, concluding that a shuffling of his staff was enough to disavow any anti-gay bias on the part of him or his staff.

I see the controversy somewhat differently. Thompson is in his 70s, having lived most of his life in a culture that ostracized and vilified gays. A much younger Baldwin has lived most of her life in a society that accepted gayness as a permissible lifestyle. The electoral contest between Baldwin and Thompson is more of a contest between the old guard and someone representing the future. Sure, Thompson has recast himself as a conservative ideologue who wants tax breaks for the rich and the rest of the tea party agenda. But fundamentally, the real question is whether we want to live in the past or embrace the future. Thompson doesn't understand this. He is counting on winning based on the nostalgia vote.

Back in the 1990s, when Thompson was governor, we had years of budget surpluses, a growing economy and everything was rosy (if you didn't happen to be in prison at the time). Thompson left his office at the height of his popularity, before his spending policies crashed state government and left us with multibillion dollar deficits. Most people are not aware that Thompson presided over a boom in productivity gains based on the integration of personal computers into businesses. Where once it took many hours to process office paperwork, it now takes minutes. These gains gave us a huge gain in tax revenues which Thompson squandered during his tenure. When the productivity gains faded, so did the surpluses, leaving the state broke and plunging into debt to maintain the massive bureaucracy Thompson created. The now-massive prison system Thompson created was the major beneficiary of Thompson's largess. If not for the hundreds of millions of dollars being thrown away on needless warehousing of prisoners, Wisconsin would not be suffering.