Presidential Cat and Mouse

How to explain the Democrats' presidential primary?

Easy. Tom and Jerry.

No, not the drink (although that might help). I mean the old Hanna Barbera cartoon. The cat and mouse.

There’s one old scene in particular that I remember: Tom chasing Jerry through the house, smacking him repeatedly with a long metal spatula. Bam! Bam! Bam! Jerry rounds a corner, and once Tom finishes skidding the area rug into a corner, he’s waiting for the cat with a pan. Bwong-ong-ong-ong-ong-ong.

Now: just replace Tom with Barack Obama, and Jerry with Hillary Clinton. Except, instead of hitting each other, they keep hitting themselves.

Election 2008.

Let the record show, if you please: I’m not aware of any racist or misogynist overtones to cats and mice, either cartoon or real.

Is anybody else absolutely fascinated by this primary? Don’t answer that – you don’t have to. I know the answer. You’re as fascinated as I am.

We can't stop talking about it. We can't stop writing about it.

Hey! Democrats! What the hell are you thinking?

It's a mystery as to why we should ask. Why it should matter to us – conservatives, Republicans, or both.

Well, maybe it isn't – maybe it's just plain human nature. Still, for us on the Right to sit around gossiping the way we are, like we're…I dunno, concerned or something – you can see why some on the Left might think we're being facetious. Sarcastic. A little less than sincere.

Why should we keep pointing out the Democrats' perpetual dysfunctionality? Why not just let them go along their merry neurotic way, and reap whatever benefits might come of it?

I have a theory. I dub it: "The Tom and Jerry Theory."

The Democrat primary is like cartoon violence: watching someone get hit with a cast iron pan, or dropped from a cliff, or swallowing a lit firecracker wouldn't be funny if it were real. But it isn't real. And it is funny.

Or maybe it’s more like rubbernecking: car accidents aren’t funny – not even a little – but we can’t help looking at them, even if it means clogging up the road for a couple seconds longer.

Like any kind of disaster footage: we feel awful for the people involved, we hope it never happens to us, but we can't stop watching.

It's Curly, getting his arm stuck in the turkey he's supposed to be preparing for dinner, and Larry trying to rescue him. Curly pulls one way, straining. Larry pulls the other way, struggling to keep his grip. You know what's coming: that turkey's going to fly across the room at the very moment that Moe walks in the door. Smack! Right in the kisser.

And you know the nose-pulling, eye-poking, head-bonking hilarity will quickly follow afterward.

That's the Democrats' presidential primary.

It's a train wreck, but it's not our train wreck. It's a catastrophe, but it's not our catastrophe. It's America's Funniest Home Videos. It isn't us tripping over the rake and falling into the kiddie pool full of snapping turtles. We're on the sidelines, uninvolved, unhindered by any direct stake in the outcome.

I admit: this kind of fascination isn't the most desirable of human behaviors. But…well, there it is.

Of course, in the real world, the Democrats' train wreck is our train wreck. One of the two remaining Democrat contenders could, all my mockery aside, very well become President.

That's a personal stake.

For example: when America went looking for a head coach, half the nation's Democrats settled on the guy running the laundry room. Every other candidate – all of them, Democrat or Republican, still in or dropped out – is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama.

Kinda risky, dontcha think?

So the Democrats' dysfunction affects us all. That's not necessarily bad: they're going all-out to damage each other while our guy basks. They're using up resources while we stockpile ours. That's no guarantee of November victory, but it helps. Things look better now than they did three months ago. They look better than we thought they would.

So. Sit back. Pop a beer. Enjoy the show.

I am.

It Just Isn't Fair!

Let’s say you’ve got a friend who, for whatever reason, likes to buy you lunch once a week. Nothing fancy: just a sandwich and soda at a local diner.

One day you also order a dessert. Then you start ordering a bowl of soup to go with your sandwich.

Your friend says nothing, generously continuing to pay. Then you wonder: why only a sandwich? Why not a steak?

Why this diner? Why not someplace nicer?

Why lunch? Why not dinner and drinks? And why only once a week?

Your friend can clearly afford to treat for any and all of these things, so you ask. Several times. You begin to complain. Tell other friends how cheap he is.

Not surprisingly, it isn’t long before he stops meeting you for lunch altogether.

The Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance released a report last week on Wisconsin tax filings: how many people at various income levels filed, and how much in taxes they paid.

The results won’t surprise anyone: fully half of all Wisconsin tax filers paid 5% of all state income taxes in 2006. Nineteen percent of tax filers paid 77% of all income taxes.

The richest 0.1% of Wisconsin’s tax filers – those with adjusted gross incomes of over $1 million – paid over 8% of all taxes. The richest 9% - those whose AGIs are over $100,000 – paid 47% of all income taxes.

To those of us on the Right, these numbers speak for themselves. No further explanation necessary. We stand aside, nodding, with knowing looks. See? There it is. Black and white. You can’t argue with it: the “wealthy” pay a disproportionate amount of taxes.

To which members of the Left say: awww, pity the poor rich people, having to pay more. They can afford it, you know. They can spare a little to help those on the other end of the economic scale.

My answers to those answers, in reverse order: true, true, and that’s not the point.

We're not arguing that the rich are paying too much. We're refuting the argument that they're not paying "a fair share."

If they’re not paying enough now, when will they be? If people making over $500,000 a year – three-tenths of one percent of all tax filers – pay over 13% of all the taxes, for which they get exactly the same services as those paying nothing (fewer services, in fact)…how is that less than "a fair share?"

And yes, I agree, half a million dollars is a lot of money. I agree, people making that much can afford to pay more. The question isn’t whether they can: the question is: should we make them?

I’ll come back to that.

Half a million is a lot. A quarter million is a lot. A hundred thousand a year? Any tax filer – and realize that “tax filer” can mean a married couple – making $100,000 is in the top 9% of tax filers in our state. They’re among those paying 47% of all state income taxes.

A couple making $100,000 could be an electrician married to a teacher. A police officer married to a construction worker. A registered nurse married to a car salesman.

Heck, the city of Madison has bus drivers making six figures.

These are hardly blueblooded country-club fourth-generation Republicans who bathe their children in champagne and attend five-grand-a-plate fundraisers for the sake of “being seen.”

Okay, so some of them are. A tiny minority. Mostly, though, these are working people. Families. People who might as well have “middle class” tattooed across their foreheads.

This is the top ten percent.

When the Left complains about “the wealthy” “not paying their fair share,” they’re talking about people like this.

And even if they’re not: even if “the rich” are only the big CEOs and corporate lawyers and investment bankers and spoiled Hollywood starlets, the point still remains. The top 0.1% pay more income taxes in Wisconsin than the bottom 50% pay. That’s not crying for the rich: that’s denying that the rich aren’t paying a fair share.

And even if you disagree – even if you think it still isn't fair – well, we’d better hope that 0.1%, or 0.3%, or 9% doesn’t decide to up and move to Texas, or Florida, or Nevada, where there is no state income tax.

And why wouldn’t they? They can buy lunch there, too.

Should they stay or should they go?

So. You want to run for office.

Or maybe not. But maybe so. You might run…it kinda depends.

Better make up your mind. Soon.

All around the state – all around the country, in fact – a whole lot of people are working on exactly that decision: whether or not to take the big leap.

They better hurry. Campaign season begins in earnest in less than three months. If a potential candidate is to dump the word "potential," he/she has to get started.

If he/she hasn't already.

The bigger the office, the more true that is. There’s a lot to do: name recognition takes a long time by itself. Raising money takes time. Finding and securing the best staff – if you don’t call early, somebody else will.

In fact, for the top-level jobs – U.S. Senate, Governor, etc. – if you aren’t well on your way already, you're already too late.

Seems like the race for President got going even before the ink was dry on 2004. Clinton and, to a lesser extent, Obama have been fighting this thing out for well over a year, maybe longer.

No wonder they’re making fools of themselves. They’re exhausted.

But as much as the neverending campaign might annoy us, that’s how they’ve had to do it.

For lower-level jobs – state legislature, maybe Congress – you still have time, but not much.

At the very latest, you have to be moving by mid-June, because your paperwork – including your nomination signatures (200, minimum, for an Assembly race) – are due on July 8.

Miss that deadline, and you don’t get on the ballot.

So there’s a lot of decision-making going on right now. People are weighing the pros and cons. The sheer amount of effort involved. The financial effect. The chances of winning.

And those decisions are being made on very incomplete information. And there’s no way to make said information any more complete. And that incompleteness may already have consigned some candidates to the second-place club.

Because you never know what might make or break you three months from now.

Two Novembers ago, following the Great Republican Disaster of 2006, I wrote:

These opportunities don’t come along every day, and even if things look bad six months out, well, things change fast in politics. The right event, issue, scandal can flip political fortunes faster than a middle-aged Congressman can learn to use e-mail. The only thing more fickle than fate is public opinion.

So, back in May, and June, and July…perhaps we should have anticipated more fully the effects of the marriage amendment. Perhaps we should have anticipated the Doyle campaign’s expert ju-jitsu on his ethics problems.

But could we have known then that Iraq and the President’s numbers were going to drag Republicans down, come November?

…No. Not in July.

One might have written something similar following the Great Democrat Disaster of 1994.

Now, an electoral sweep like those in 2006 and 1994 come along once in a…well, historically, it’s more than every 12 years. Conventional wisdom has been that 2008 will be another good year for the Democrats, but not as good as 2006.

That was, of course, before the top of the Democrat ticket went completely dysfunctional. Ah, but perhaps I’m giving that too much weight. There’s still plenty of time for Democrats to get their house back in order.

Plenty of time for the war, the economy, gas prices to come around. Or get worse. Plenty of time for a new scandal, a new issue, a new crisis to make one side look better. Or worse.

And that’s the point: there are so many variables – so many things that could go right, or wrong, between now and then.

There’s no way to tell. Not from here. Not from August. Not from October 15.

You have to sign the papers, buy the signs, knock on the doors, record the commercials. Work your butt off, and hope fate doesn't bite you there.

High taxes? Blame the Badgers.

Happy tax day! Don’t you wish it were Election Day, too?

Today has special meaning for us in Wisconsin. It's a day to reflect on decades among the elite.

It’s not easy to stay in the top ten highest-taxed states as long as we have.

This is well-documented already, but I’ll document a little more. We were 7th, nationally, in the percentage of our income sucked away by state and local taxes last year, and that wasn’t a fluke. Our best ranking in the last 38 years: 9th, in 1979.

And that’s just the taxes. That doesn’t include the fees.

Us. The Badger State. A tax hell. You'd think the words “badger” and “taxes” were somehow synonymous.

I'll come back to that later.

It’s not that we haven’t tried to change things. We have. We’ve tried arguing. We’ve tried shame. We’ve pointed out the historical record of tax burden vs. economic growth. We’ve pointed out the ease with which businesses – both old and new – can locate outside Wisconsin.

We’ve tried reason. Logic. Methodically laying out the economic facts. The Laws of Supply and Demand. The Laffer Curve. JFK's theory on taxes and economic growth.

All this, we’ve tried. All this has failed.

Not only that, but half of our Legislature is controlled by Democrats who are so eager to raise taxes even higher, they removed their Majority Leader for backing a budget that only raised taxes $376 million, instead of the nine billion they really wanted.

What! Only hundreds of millions! You DINO! Get out!

They’re not just okay with raising taxes. Not just resigned to it. They’re eager. Anxious. Enthusiastic.

And the voters – for whose wisdom I have nothing but respect – put them there. And left them there. Voting irrationally against their own economic interests, as Barack Obama might say.

And now, finally, I think I’ve figured out why.

Badgers.

Because those stupid miners just had to tough out the winter in the caves they’d dug, thereby earning the nickname Badgers. Because the university had to choose Badgers as their nickname. Because the Badger had to become our official state animal.

Because, as everyone knows, the American Badger’s scientific name is Taxidea taxus.

Taxidea. Taxus. The only mammal out of thousands with genus and species names beginning with "tax." Even other kinds of badgers have entirely different names – Melogale, and Meles. The honey badger’s scientific name is Mellivora capensis.

I don’t know what any of those mean. “Taxus,” in Latin, means “a yew tree.” It can also mean “an infernal tree,” which seems appropriate.

The Latin word “tax” appears to be analogous to the word “whack” in colloquial American English. That is, it’s a word describing the sound made when you hit something.

As in: “I taxed him until he couldn’t get up any more.” Or: “Hey, Vinny, da boss wants us ta go tax dat guy down at da docks.”

Regardless: the person who named the badger almost undoubtedly spoke English, and thus knew that he (or she) was choosing a word beginning with “tax.” No offense to that guy, but…we’ve got to make a change.

I know, it seems silly. Ridiculous. Surely, there’s no connection. It’s just one of those odd things that make you look twice.

Maybe. Or maybe there’s some kind of karmic convergence going on here. And as Bill Cosby said: “as ridiculous as some things may sound, there comes a time of desperation, when no one’s looking, that you will give the ridiculous a try.”

We’ve got to organize. To agitate! Start a petition drive! Hand out flyers! Engage in fruitless but symbolic public gestures that stand an excellent chance of being mocked without mercy, should they make the evening news in defiance of all odds!

Taxidea taxus has got to go!

Yeah, okay, so it doesn’t make any sense. It’s ridiculous. Taxidea taxus doesn’t even translate to anything related to taxes, and even if it did, that has zero relation to actual taxes in today’s Wisconsin.

Fine. You got a better idea?

If nothing else, it’s more realistic than insisting on the borders Wisconsin was supposed to have under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Christians and Homosexuality

The Baraboo News Republic: hotbed of social and religious controversy.

You wouldn't think that, maybe, but it's true. We'll have a few quiet weeks, and then…bam! A letter to the editor, condemning…something. Homosexuality and those who support it. Christians who want to tell everybody else how to live.

It started up again last week. A letter appeared, criticizing a local columnist who writes mostly about just everyday things, but who now and then throws in something…more controversial. She supports gay marriage, for example, and doubts the Bible’s authority.

The letter-writer took her to task for that. Another columnist responded to his letter, as did another letter-writer, and then another.

As sure as I'm writing this, there'll be more. Somebody will thwack that ball right back, and then somebody else will do the same. And so on, and so on, and so on. And then we'll rest for a while, and then it'll start up again.

It's a difficult issue. A painful one, for any number of reasons. I haven't joined in the debate yet, but I will now.

Here’s my take in a nutshell: we shouldn’t ignore what the Bible says; we should humbly admit our own inability to follow and please God; and Jesus gave us a bottom line.

I'll explain, but first…

Why this debate?

Why homosexuality? How is it that – given the entire range of human weakness; the wide and varied scope of our ability to do things that are bad for us – homosexuality occupies so much attention?

There are other sins. Other things God told us to do, or not do: divorce, adultery, charity, greed. I'm willing to bet that these are far more widespread than homosexuality.

I should mention, since I'm referring to homosexuality as a sin: assuming that it is a sin, that makes homosexuals…sinners.

Hey, we've got something in common!

That's an important point. And yet, for every letter about homosexuality that appears in the paper, how many are there about lust? Jealousy? Slacking off on the job?

Fewer. That’s for sure. If any at all.

So. Why?

I have a few guesses.

Political opportunity. You need an enemy in politics. You need an issue to rally support, interest the media, spur monetary contributions. Whichever side you're on, this issue works.

And I'm sure there are fringes on both sides, too: Christians who, for some reason, think homosexuality is worse than other sins; gay-rights types who think traditional marriage and societal mores are ridiculous.

Maybe. I do know that many Christians seem to – repeat, seem to – focus on homosexuality to the exclusion of all else, which seems wrong. That's not to say we shouldn’t concern ourselves over it at all – it just seems like there are bigger battles to fight.

In defense of concerned Christians

Bear with me, now, because there’s no such thing as a perfect analogy. These next few aren’t going to change that.

If you had a friend who was drinking too much – hurting his job and family and health – would you feel obliged to say something?

If you didn’t say anything, would you feel guilty about that?

Or maybe it’s drugs. Or maybe he’s cheating on his wife.

What if you saw a dog locked in a car on a 95-degree August day? Or a child?

Maybe you’re acquainted with a young adult who’s coasting along, working at the Gap, spending all his money on video games and flip-flops. No focus, no school, no ambition, no savings, no plan for moving his life ahead.

Bad decisions, all. None of which are necessarily any of our business, even if the people making them are close to us.

I think the urge to speak out about sexuality – specifically, in this case, homosexuality – is like that. It’s not our business. It’s not hurting us. But.

Just for a moment, just for the sake of argument, assume that God doesn’t like it. Wants us to avoid it. If so, that’s pretty important.

Ignoring God's commands, like drinking too much or blowing off your taxes, is bad for you. Thus, some Christians feel obliged to speak out. That still doesn’t answer the question: why homosexuality over so many other things, but that’s the motivation.

Of course, if it’s important to know what God wants from us, it’s even more important to know that there is a God, and that He does want something. Unless you believe that, the rest won’t matter.

Which brings me to:

I’m no theologian. Just a guy doing his imperfect best to follow Jesus’ teachings – and frequently failing. As in: I can barely see that mote in your eye, what with the Giant Redwood I’ve got growing out of mine.

Which means it’s a damn good thing Jesus came down here in the first place. Hey, if I were perfect, if I were perfectly able to know what God wants and then to do that, I wouldn’t need Jesus in the first place.

He could’ve just stayed home.

But he didn't, because I do, because I'm not. And neither are you. Neither are the columnists, or the letter-writers, or the homosexuals, or the heterosexuals.

Fortunately, Jesus gave us a bottom line:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Mark 12:28-31

Jesus lived, died, then rose again so we could all muddle along being imperfect human beings – which, as it happens, we’re all really good at – and still find favor in God's sight. That’s the bottom line.

We shouldn't ignore anything the Bible has to say. But that is the bottom line.

Make room for the big rocks

There's a story I see now and then about a time-management coach, who puts a big rock into a jar and asks his class whether the jar is full.

Another big rock won't fit, so they say yes. The coach then pours smaller rocks into the jar, and again asks if it's full. Then he pours in sand, and then water after that.

The lesson: make room for the big things first, or you'll never squeeze them in later.

Thing is, we’ve got lots of people – myself included, sometimes – who are having all kinds of trouble wrapping themselves around The Big Thing. Who are having trouble accepting the existence of God, much less the death and resurrection of His Son. Who struggle with humbling themselves to the will of God, and to the necessity of that humility even when we don’t know what God’s will for us is.

That's the big rock. We've got to put that one in, first.

Following Jesus – or, at least, trying to – has been a source of both comfort and confidence for me. Yep, confidence through humility. That’s what I’m saying.

It gives you peace. It gives you perspective, knowing that there’s something greater than you out there. Something bigger than all the petty little wants and pains and inconveniences and comforts of life here on Earth.

Lots of people don’t have that, and they won’t. Not when their only exposure to Christianity is the monthly letter-to-the-editor angrily denouncing homosexuals and those who support the homosexual lifestyle.

Let's wrap this up

Someone I respect once said to me: "I'm willing to be hated for what I believe." True dat, but a message board in front of a Lutheran church once told me: "Don't keep the faith, spread the faith."

True dat, too, but sometimes – like now – I can't reconcile those two statements. I can't reconcile the need to follow all of God's commands with my desire to bring others to Him.

Luckily, I don't have to. I have only to remember the bottom line, and know that even if you're not following all God's commands – which none of us are – you can still love Him, and be loved by Him. All you have to do is ask.

Let's fight that battle, and leave the rest for later.

Absolut-ly Silly

What’s Aztlan got to do with a little girl wearing a necktie?

Timing, outrage, and bad judgment. And this column.

That, plus neither story means very much, either in the grand scheme or the humble one. And I’d guess that one of them – the one drawing greater outrage – means even less than the other.

That’s the Absolut Vodka ad – the one that shows a Mexico with a northern border up around Seattle instead of San Diego.

I know what you're thinking: so, that's a bad thing?

Let the Mexicans deal with all those raving San Francisco Lefties. Wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes, riots. Nancy Pelosi can rant and rave on behalf of poor Guatemalan illegals – oh, sorry, I mean undocumented citizens – flowing in through Mexico’s southern border, and demonize Mexican industry for the air pollution in Mexico City. Leave us United Statesans alone.

Well, okay. We'd like to keep Arizona. Our next President is from there, we think.

Fine.

Over the faux-North American “map” are the words: “In An Absolut World.” Yes, if only the world were fair and just, that land would be taken away from the U.S. If, in fact, it had ever belonged to us in the first place.

The company was shocked to hear that the ad was insulting to Americans: that this touched a sensitive nerve. Because the issues of citizenship and illegality and border enforcement haven’t been in the news at all. How were they supposed to know?

Whether the ad actually means anything…well, that is a question. What’s going to happen, exactly? More Mexicans will cross illegally into the U.S.? Mexico will invade? The American Southwest as Britain’s Falkland Islands?

Because of a vodka ad?

As Margaret Thatcher is reputed to have said at some point during the brief Falklands War of 1982: not bloody likely.

The ad was insulting, because it presents an assumption of American wrongness. That’s how I interpreted it, anyway. But that’s it. There’s nothing more to it.

So it was funny that, while this “issue” was burning up the blogosphere, a similar story took place in relative quiet, about half an hour from here.

An opposite gender dress-up day at an elementary school raised the ire of a Christian radio group Friday morning, and the Reedsburg School District was flooded with calls from outraged listeners.

The radio show that outed the dress-up day is called “Crosstalk.” I can’t be the only one who finds that funny.

I almost hate to say it, but I can see their point.

That’s not to say I agree with their point, or even that there is a point. Better, perhaps, to say that I see their train of thought.

If you’re concerned about government schools indoctrinating our children in Politically Correct dogma; if you believe that something like this is a stepping stone to normalization of cross-dressing, transsexuality, and homosexuality; if said normalization concerns you; then you’re going to be concerned about this.

There might be – in fact, almost assuredly are – those who want that. Those who think public schools should indoctrinate our kids in exactly that kind of PC dogma.

Whether any of those people teach in Reedsburg is a whole ‘nother question, but undoubtedly, they exist.

So that’s the thought process. In the abstract, at least, I agree with it. In the concrete, well, it seems a bit overwrought.

Schools have those “fun days” all the time. My kids wore their pajamas to school one day. They were supposed to wear the strangest hat they could find on another.

Had notice of a “gender day” come to my house, I’d have looked crossways at it. I’d have found it uncomfortable. I’d have thought to myself: that’s a bad idea.

But I’d have thought that because…come on, in the litigious hypersensitivity of today's America, that’s going to raise a stink.

You wonder why nobody at the Reedsburg School District thought the same thing. You wonder why nobody at Absolut thought to themselves: leave that one on the drawing board.

That’s the real “scandal” of these two stories: not what actually happened, but that nobody's Bad Idea Alarm went off.

Hey, I understand. You love the idea, so you ignore that troublesome little "no, don't" thought. It happens.

Just, most of the time, it doesn't hit the news.

Teenagers, corruption, Hobbes (the philosopher, not the tiger), and Star Wars

What do you say to a teenager who asks if you're endorsing a Hobbesian view of humanity?

I found out today. You say: um…huh?

For crying out loud.

My daughter, a high school sophomore, came to the Capitol with her American Government class today. About forty teenagers and their teacher. They had some time between their arrival this morning and their first scheduled activity, so I was asked to speak.

Which I did.

Talking to teenagers is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you have a chance to tell them something important: something that you, a more experienced adult, have learned and found important.

On the other hand, these aren't your kids. You don't want to go pushing some belief system on them that their parents might not want pushed on them.

And of course, on the other hand, the odds that some random adult (like me) can plant a seed of knowledge in a young teenage mind are pretty steep.

Still, it's worth a shot. So I asked them what they thought of politics. The answer: corrupt, natch. The answer I was hoping for.

That's what people think about politics – it's all dirty, nasty, corrupt: just a bunch of people arguing over…stuff. Because there's stuff to argue over, I guess. One side says one thing, so the other side says the opposite. Never mind any facts or logic or necessity: it's all about getting one over on the other guy.

Either that, or it's about money and power and holding onto both.

Okay, so the kid didn't say all that. I'm extrapolating. It was at this point that I got the question about Hobbesian theory.

Fact is, the people in politics aren't corrupt. Most of them, anyway, in my experience. They're all well-meaning people.

But even well-meaning people are corruptible. There's money and power in politics. That will attract corruption and the easily corrupted.

At one point, their teacher spoke up, saying that even the Founding Fathers were just people trying to protect narrow interests.

He is, I happen to know, a liberal Democrat, which made the fact that he said what he said even sweeter. Because that's exactly the point I was trying to make, except I wouldn't have thought of making it that way.

The Founding Fathers were just a bunch of guys with their own narrow personal interests, and their own regional interests, who nonetheless put a system together that prevents any one person or group of people from gaining too much power.

Because that's how you protect your own personal interests: prevent anybody else from becoming strong enough to screw with them.

The dictator of Zimbabwe might be doing a strong-arm "recount," to hold onto power, but that doesn't happen here. No matter how bitter and angry people are over the recent Supreme Court election, nobody has suggested that Justice Louis Butler refuse to step down. And nobody will.

And we have this system because people are either corrupt or corruptible. Or both.

Maybe some of my captive teenage audience got that. Or maybe I was just another adult droning on about…stuff. At least none of them fell asleep.

I used one analogy from football: the Patriots, cheating, even though they were already one of the best teams in the league.

I used an analogy from Star Wars: the scene in which Anakin and Amidala are discussing governance, how things happen, and how Anakin thinks they should happen. I'd meant to mention the scene in which Chancellor Palpatine instructs Anakin in the pervasive nature of power – those who have it want to keep it more than they want anything else – but I forgot.

The Star Wars reference did draw an exasperated "Dad!" from my daughter, so mission accomplished, there.

And then I did my "Evan Almighty" dance. That had nothing to do with the talk – it was just to embarrass my daughter. And it did.

Altogether, then, a successful day, whether I taught anybody anything or not.

So what do we do about it?

So we’re all pretty sick of this Supreme Court election. Am I right?

Sick of the negative ads. The gutter politics. The mutually assured destruction of reputation and trust.

Me, too. And I’m worried about the effect this all may have on our courts: if the Court simply becomes one more partisan football…

I may be worried unnecessarily. Six months from now, the vast majority of us will have forgotten all about it. In fact, considering today’s expected turnout, most of us may never have known.

Still, it’s a problem. Whoever wins, the huge amounts of money spent by third parties create an appearance of impropriety. It leaves our courts vulnerable to accusations that, instead of ruling according to the law, they’re ruling to reward their supporters, or punish their opponents.

The anonymity of these third-party groups is another problem. Oh, sure, we know who WMC is: they’re businesspeople promoting business. We know who WEAC is: a public employee union.

We don’t know who the Greater Wisconsin Committee (GWC) is. They don’t even have a website. Here’s a real live shadowy group, spending money – we don’t know whose – to influence an election – and we don't know why.

And even though we know who WMC and WEAC are, that’s not necessarily all we want to know. Who’s bankrolling the campaigning? Is it really all from dues, or are individual contributors giving much larger amounts?

If so, who? What’s their agenda? What is it they want? Are they really just local people banding together to influence their own government, or is it a lone billionaire from California, whose motives are his own?

We don’t know.

I agree: these are problems. Little cancerous growths, eating away at public faith in the institutions that maintain order in our society. They are the dark side of free speech.

So: what do we do about it?

Notice I didn’t ask whether we can do anything about it, or whether we should. Nobody is asking that question: nobody’s wondering whether this is all simply an unappetizing cost of doing business in a free society.

It is that. And it isn’t, too. If this were a really-and-for-true free society, would seven people interpreting the laws which limit our behavior be so very important?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wants campaign finance reform: limits on spending, public funding of campaigns, matching funds to offset third-party expenditures.

We could do that. All of it. I have doubts about their efficacy – especially if a third-party group dumps a half million on a race three days before the election – how will “matching public funds” help, exactly?

I also have doubts about forcing taxpayers to fund campaigns. And I have doubts about spending limits, too.

And anyway, wasn’t McCain-Feingold supposed to fix all this already?

We could also switch to appointed judges, rather than elected. Because federal judicial appointments are entirely politics-free and non-nasty.

At the very least, we could make those third-party groups disclose who’s giving them money. That parallels my bottom line about campaign finance: campaigns can spend as much as they want, but we get to know where they got it. Everything above the table.

Just apply that to third parties, too.

Of course, it’s an incomplete plan: how do you determine what kinds of expenditures will trigger the disclosure requirement? A certain time limit before the election? Specific issues or phrases? A threshold amount?

And then: how do you make those decisions? And who makes them?

I’ll tell you what I’d prefer: no limits on candidate spending. No limits on the money they can raise. It’s more democratic, because it narrows the advantages rich candidates have over the rest of us.

And then enforce strict reporting requirements. You get to spend it, but we get to know where you got it.

It might not work. Or it might. One way to find out.

It won’t entirely settle the “appearance of impropriety” problem, of course, but at least it won’t run afoul of the First Amendment.

It won’t end the nastiness, either. Politics and elections will still be bare-knuckle and bloody – the more important the election, the more that will be true.

But then, none of the other “solutions” people are offering will change that, either.