We’re Back

Welcome back to regular installments of YSDA.

I took the summer off — except for far more frequent check-ins on the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary than I had anticipated as the Democrats were a lot more entertaining than we had a right to expect.

The idea was to spend time on book projects. That was pretty successful. I put the finishing touches on my biography of Democratic Gov. Tony Earl (that book will be out in March, but you’re encouraged to pre-order now!) and developed a handful of new book proposals. My agent is shopping those around and I’ll get started on the first of those projects this month.

That will require some renovations here. Rather than posting five or six days a week, I’ll limit myself to two or three. This gives me more time to write books and it gives you more time to digest the deep insights and heavy wisdom packed into each YSDA offering.

I also spent some time studying conservative (which is to say classically liberal) thought. I read George Will, Milton Friedman and other contemporary writers and I listened to lectures on natural law and Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. I’ll write about that in lengthy and tedious detail on Thursday. Set aside the full day. Ask not to be disturbed.

It was an eventful summer. The populist wave continues with hard-left candidates winning lots of Democratic primaries. But not in Wisconsin, where we narrowly escaped disaster. Now this fall’s governor’s race looks to be a relatively normal choice between mainstream candidates. Yeah, I know Tom Tiffany is a MAGA man, but he’s not running that way. He’s really just a run-of-the-mill windsock pol. He was into Trump when that suited him and now he can’t recall his name. This looks to be a game played between the 40-yard lines, no matter what the partisans will try to tell you.

And the first Marquette poll since the primary should be encouraging for Crowley. He leads Tiffany by five points among likely voters, which is one point outside the margin of error. There’s also a surprisingly small percentage of undecided voters (only 7%), which means fewer persuadable voters and an advantage for the guy with the lead. Finally, 98% of Hong voters say they’ll vote for Crowley, so there doesn’t seem to be a backlash against the establishment for promoting him. Credit Francesca Hong for being a good team player all along.

Nonetheless, neither the DSA nor MAGA is going away. The tension between moderates and the hard-left and right will be something we’ll be commenting on all autumn and, unfortunately. well beyond that I’m afraid.

Here in Madison, in July a police officer fatally shot a violent career criminal named Corey Ruiz as Ruiz was resisting arrest and wielding a knife. The typical rush to judgement ensued, with some public officials and community leaders declaring it an “execution” within moments of the event. The city’s Police Monitor unhelpfully fanned the flames when she claimed that she would “burn this city down.” Predictably, Al Sharpton showed up to claim his share of the attention while he painted Ruiz as another Martin Luther King, Jr., which he was not.

The state’s Department of Justice is investigating and ultimately the Dane County District Attorney’s Office will decide what, if anything, should happen next. A review of police training and deescalation procedures is appropriate. Body cameras will finally be worn by all Madison officers after decades of resistance to it by the Madison left, which fears that the footage will show officers acting properly while criminals are acting like criminals. If deadly force was justified in this case will be a matter for investigators, prosecutors and perhaps ultimately the courts to determine. But I know something about the Madison police. They do not commit executions.

Now it’s time to look ahead to the fall elections. It’s time to put away the shorts and pull out the wool, to store the gin and find the brandy, to enjoy a few final rounds of golf (to the extent it’s possible to enjoy a round of golf) and dust off the compound bow.

I love the fall. And I’m happy to be back at this. I hope you had a good summer. Thanks for rejoining me.