On Wisconsin, part one.
This week, Catalan at Heart presents 'On Wisconsin', a multi-part look at the budgetary imbroglio Wisconsin finds itself in. By tracing the who, the how, the why and everything between, we will offer a seemingly tangential, always empirical and ultimately definitive look on the crisis. With snark.
Part one:
As far as Wisconsin political theatre goes, the drama from fourteen Senate Democrats refusing a call to quorum and escaping to Illinois to avoid a sure-to-lose vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" is without precedent. While the resulting schism is not starved for analogues to earlier affairs -- race relations, the original turmoil over unions, Bush/Kerry, Laverne and Shirley ending -- the connectedness of today's society has artificially amplified the fervor to a new critical mass. While feasible to have avoided or compartmentalized earlier affairs, one click of the mouse or opening of a vibrating phone or button press of a remote control assaults one with instant news and faster commentary. With tweets and status alerts and wall postings now the stuff of nightmares, a relentless force hunting and chasing regardless of the speed undertaken to get away or the tactics performed to elude its clutches.
But as far as Wisconsin in general goes, one need not look far to find commensurate histrionics. Only only needs to look to Green Bay. To look at Brett Favre and Ted Thompson.
A summary:
1992 -- Green Bay Packers general manager Ron Wolf hires Ted Thompson to serve as the assistant director of pro personnel.
1993 -- Thompson is promoted to director of pro personnel.
1997 -- Thompson is promoted to director of player personnel.
2000 -- Former Packers head coach Mike Holmgren, now the Seattle Seahawks head coach and general manager, hires Thompson to serve as vice president of football operations. Duties include but are not limited to: heading the scouting department, running the team's draft boards.
2005 -- Thompson is brought back to replace Mike Sherman as Packers general manager.
2005/2006 Season -- The Seahawks, with the players Thompson scouted and graded, make the Super Bowl. Holmgren: "Once Ted Thompson came on board and we settled down a little bit, we started making good decisions."
30/01/2006 -- Brett Favre -- noted prima donna, womanizer and then-Packers quarterback -- is noncommittal to returning the following season. Says Favre: "If I had to pick right now and make a decision, I'd say I'm not coming back."
25/04/06 -- Favre decides to return.
12/11/06 -- Packers head coach Mike McCarthy publicly states his wanting for Favre to return but also not wanting Favre to waffle on the decision. Seems reasonable enough, the NFL is a multi-billion dollar business, after all.
02/02/2007 -- Favre commits to returning to the Packers.
04/03/2008 -- Favre retires. His last throw: an interception in overtime in the NFC Championship game.
25/04/08 -- On 'Late Night with David Letterman', Favre says, "I mean it was never a clear-cut decision. I can't expect people to understand. I think people have all faced decisions at times where you never know."
11/07/08 -- Favre requests an unconditional release from the Packers. Official press release from the Packers: "The balls on this asshole."
14/07/08 -- Favre tells Republican State Television he wants to continue his playing career not in Green Bay but elsewhere.
07/08/08 -- Thompson trades Favre to the New York Jets after Favre rescinds his retirement. Packers fans are sharply divided:
Some appreciate Thompson's approach to building through the draft and locking players coming up for contracts in-place before said players hit the market. This approach -- the one which got Seattle to a Super Bowl, the one which built the Patriots a dynasty -- values smart-drafting to score cheap players in a salary cap league and also generally punting free agency -- an often-times bidding war on sometimes expensive, experienced players who may not be more than negligibly better than incoming rookies from the draft, unless a free agent is a generational talent that can be had for a fair contract, a la Charles Woodson -- or an asset who will outperform the dollars given to him.
Others cry foul on Favre's behalf -- for some their boyhood hero, for others the man they wish they could've been, for others the wanted-father-of-not-as-of-yet-conceived-children -- claiming he was railroaded out of town by a megalomaniac in Thompson, an evil sorcerer who didn't spend big money on free agents to make the team better in the short term. Because, damn the future, there is no time like the present! They largely declare themselves to be "Favre fans" -- not "Packer fans" -- and openly root for the monstrosity constructed by Thompson to lose.
11/02/2009 -- After the Jets miss the playoffs -- a disastrous end to a promising season -- Favre retires again.
28/04/09 -- Favre is granted an unconditional release. "No intention of returning to football," says Favre.
15/06/09 -- Favre admits to interest in playing again. Says his intention "isn't to create controversy".
17/07/09 -- With the Minnesota Vikings in pursuit of Favre -- one of two teams he originally wished to go to upon coming back from his first retirement -- Favre imposes a 30 July deadline on himself for deciding whether to return again.
28/07/09 -- Favre says he won't end his second retirement.
18/08/09 -- Favre ends his second retirement and signs with the Vikings.
03/08/2010 -- Per media reports, Favre tells the Vikings (hilariously close to the start of a presumed-to-be second season with the team) that he won't be returning.
04/08/10 -- Favre denies the sourced-reports.
16/08/10 -- Longtime friend and current-teammate Ryan Longwell, along with Jared Allen and Steve Hutchinson, fly on the owner of the Vikings' private jet to meet Favre in Mississippi. They do this to try, in person, to convince Favre to come back for another season. The season that not two weeks earlier he denied reports saying he wasn't coming back to play for.
17/08/10 -- Favre joins his teammates on the plane, coming back for what presumably is his last season.
06/02/2011 -- The Packers win the Super Bowl after overcoming fifteen players being lost for the season on injured-reserve, a testament to the calculated moves of Thompson to build depth in previous drafts and through shrewd in-season pickups off the scrap heap. Favre's successor, Aaron Rodgers, was brilliant leading up to and throughout the playoffs and earns Super Bowl MVP.
07/02/2011 -- Some Favre fans finally admit they were wrong. Hysterically, most just pretend the whole thing never happened and use images of Aaron Rodgers holding the MVP trophy as their Facebook profile picture.
During the Packers' civil war, one side stuck with a commitment to Thompson's process. To a methodology void of brash rhetoric and orgiastic decrees. The other side fabricated stories of Thompson's ineptitude (how dare he not trade for Randy Moss even though Moss wouldn't make the concessions for Green Bay that he would for the Patriots) and outright omitted salient points (like saying no overtures were made by the Packers to stop him from retiring the first time) and blamed all subsequent problems of the Packers on Ted Thompson or Favre no longer being on the team, regardless of either's proximity to the actual root cause.
It is in the Orwellian manipulation of Favre fans that non-tangential parallels can be drawn to now. Of how one side staunchly tries to uphold the democratic process. How that side stops a bill from a totalitarian entrance into law. Of how the other side's figurehead routinely lies or has a henchman do it for him. Of how that side's supportors vehemently attack the other with a disregard for nuance and objectivity. Of how those on the side of the Democrats now are brothers to those on the side of Thompson then. Of how those on the side of Governor Walker now are accomplices to the two-faced scheming of Favre then.
This is not, however, to ascribe blame for the budget shortfall to one side or the other. That comes later, and one would be wise to keep in mind the teachings of Ted Thompson of not mortgaging the future for the now until then.