Desperately seeking civility

By Bill Kraus

Everywhere I turn I hear a plea for civility in politics generally and in political campaigns particularly.

There is even an organization in Oshkosh called the Oshkosh Civility Project devoted to civility. Another is forming in Madison. There may be more.

In government and in campaigns the ad hominem attacks continue unabated nonetheless.

The reason is that incivility is a symptom not a cause of what the pleaders are unhappy about.

The cause is that politics is increasingly the province of yellow-dog partisans.

Yellow dogs want the kind of red-meat demonization that is now endemic and has been for so long.

The campaigns and pronouncements are devoted to currying the support of the rabid yellow-dog voters who have long since decided who and what they favor.

Election overload

By Bill Kraus


It is my fervent hope that 2012 will go down in the record books as the year of the most elections, that we will never again approach this year’s six elections in 10 months.

It all started out so innocently. A February primary to chose the two finalists for the Supreme Court election in April eliminated one contender. The incumbent, predictably, won by a large margin over the successful challenger and was expected to do so again in the finals in April.

Then all hell broke loose.

Recalls everywhere and anywhere. A Supreme Court race that was more about who liked the governor more and who liked him not at all instead of about the two candidates who were on the ballot and their virtues if any.

Recall frenzy took over and election fatigue began to set in as we had our first-ever general elections in May and June.

Diversity in politics

By Bill Kraus


I was invited to a post-football-game party by then-UW President Fred Harvey Harrington more than 50 years ago. Others in attendance included professors, administrators, legislators, students, citizens from far and wide. It was the most diverse, best party I had ever attended.

When he was chancellor of UW-Stevens Point, Lee Dreyfus threw the same kind of parties in that smaller town where diversity was more common but not complete. The chief of police was there. The editor of the local paper. The president of the paper mill. Students. Teachers. Athletes. Politicians.

We carried this kind of mixing and matching into our own lives when I married a woman whose friends were mostly from the arts while mine were mostly from politics with a dose of journalists. They got along great. They were different in almost every way except their lives were driven by a common entrepreneurship. Artists were only as good as their last production, reporters as their last story, politicians as their last election.