Wisconsin
Republican Governor Scott Walker recently wrote a compelling
book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s
Challenge. This book, co-written with Marc Thiessen,
is not an autobiography but is a gripping account of his early
years as Governor. It delves into his recollection of the
high profile fights over pension reform and bringing spending
under control.
Whatever are one’s politics, readers should be outraged
the way the Governor and his supporters were treated from
the nasty rhetoric to the mob scene mentality. The Governor
and his family were repeatedly threatened, legislators who
supported him had their house vandalized, Walker was repeatedly
called a Nazi, and his supporters were compared to terrorists.
In the book, the Governor quoted President Obama’s speech
after Congresswomen Gabby Giffords was shot, “it’s
important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that
we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not
in a way that wounds.” Walker then goes on to say, “Those
words apparently fell on deaf ears in Madison.”
The book
focuses on his decision to reform the state’s employee’s
pensions and take on the way the Union forced membership.
He explains how he could have either raised taxes, laid off
thousands of public workers, cut Medicaid or school budgets,
or reform collective bargaining. He chose the latter, explaining,
“Rather than a right, collective bargaining has turned
out to be an expensive entitlement. It denies hardworking
taxpayers their ‘right’ to the efficient delivery
of public services.”
He stated,
that it was insane that a Wisconsin bus driver was “Madison’s
highest paid city government employee last year. In addition,
before I became Governor, a teacher was laid off even though
she was chosen as the outstanding teacher of the year. She
was fired because she was the last hired so the first fired
under the then collective bargaining system.”
Because
he was able to communicate this to the residents of Wisconsin,
and show how the reforms implemented would change things for
the better, he overwhelmingly won a recall election. He received
more votes for his second gubernatorial election than the
first. He noted, “We won by explaining to the people
in real relative terms why we were on their side. The winning
combination for a Republican is to mix logic with the emotion
of the heart.”
In the
latter part of the book, Walker explains his model of leadership.
All politicians, regardless of political party, should take
note that he kept his campaign promises by making bold and
necessary decisions. He came into office with a fiscal crisis
and actually fixed it. Prior to his election, Wisconsin faced
a $3.6 billion dollar budget deficit, an unemployment rate
of 7.8%, and a 27% increase in property taxes. Under his leadership
Wisconsin now enjoys a $342 million budget surplus, a decline
in property taxes, and an unemployment rate of 6.7%. He commented
directly, “A good leader has to fix things but also
communicate to the people they represent what they are doing
and why they are doing it.”
Regardless
of one’s ideology, Unintimidated: A Governor’s
Story and a Nation’s Challenge, is a must read.
Governor Walker should be recognized for being a leader of
principle, action, and resolve. He was able to offer those
in his state big, bold, and positive solutions through the
reforms implemented. As he said in the book’s dedication
to his sons, “I want them to live in an America as great
as the one I grew up in,” and noted “What we need
to do is to think more about the next generation than we do
about the next election.”
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