Hasn't done Wisconsin many favors there
There were many telling moments during Thursday's Republican debate, most of them resulting from unsubtle efforts by the Fox moderators to gut this or that candidate like a hog in an apparent attempt to see which of them might be up to the rigors of a true campaign and which should kindly get off the stage so the network can spend their valuable time on the others. For example:
[Chris Wallace:] Governor Walker, when you ran for governor of Wisconsin back in 2010, you promised that you would create 250,000 jobs in your first term, first four years. In fact, Wisconsin added barely half that and ranked 35th in the country in job growth. Now you're running for president, and you're promising an economic plan in which everyone will earn a piece of the American dream.
Given your record in Wisconsin, why should voters believe you?
Well now, that's a damn fine question, and might I suggest
why should voters believe you be added as obligatory closer to every debate question in every debate from here on in. Wallace's statistics are
on the mark; despite Walker's rigorous economic program of tax cuts, services cuts and union busting, the state's job growth remains moribund—during his first term, the state was
dead last among its midwest counterparts. And it
hasn't been getting better. (Compounding the woes, Walker's much-touted
Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is as we speak
enmeshed in scandal among charges of cronyism (quelle surprise) and incompetent oversight. Crooked dealings in a Scott Walker-led office? Say it ain't so.)
So the Wisconsin situation is not the Mad Maxian clusterfudge of, say, Sam Brownback's Kansas, but it's not exactly the record you'd want or expect from a presidential contender. Scott Walker, for his part, dodged the question.
Well, the voters in Wisconsin elected me last year for the third time because they wanted someone who aimed high, not aimed low.
Head below the fold for more on Walker's rhetoric.
Got it. It was a silly campaign promise, not to be taken seriously. Like "a chicken in every pot," but without pots or chickens.
Before I came in, the unemployment rate was over eight percent. It's now down to 4.6 percent. We've more than made up for the jobs that were lost during the recession. And the rate in which people are working is almost five points higher than it is nationally.
By gum, I think we've found the secret of the Bush presidency. Crater the economy five feet into the ground during your final year in office, thus allowing every ambitious pol in the country to take credit for the
amazing, astounding growth they were able to achieve in comparison when things shudderingly return to some vague sense of normality. It's the economic equivalent of the Republican talking point,
we kept the country safe [notcounting911].
The last bit of that, "the rate in which people are working," is a bafflingly oblique turn of phrase that took some time to parse out, but Walker seems to be referring to the labor force participation rate, which Walker partisans have been using in their public cherry-picked defenses for a while now. Simplified, that's the percentage of able Americans who are counted as being "in" the labor force, as opposed to those who are not seeking jobs (or who have given up on finding work altogether). Students don't count, for example, or retirees, or people who might have until recently been working solely for the health insurance but who now don't have to do that because, you know, reasons.
What Walker's not saying is that while Wisconsin does indeed have a higher rate of worker "participation" than is true nationally, his administration didn't have anything to do with that.
Since February 2011, the national labor-force participation rate has dropped to 62.7%, from 64.2%. Wisconsin’s rate, much healthier than the national average, has also declined but by significantly less, to 68.4% from 69.1%.
So even that statistic has gotten
worse under Walker's tenure, not better; he's hanging his hat on it being slightly less worse than it could have been. Not exactly trophy material, but a good indication of how deep into the barrel Walker has to scrape to come up with a selling point on the economic front.