In the wake of the Wisconsin budget delays, former Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, was voted out of her position of leadership in favor of Sen. Russ Decker, D-Weston. After any situation as embarrassing as four months of budget purgatory, it was not a surprise that the Senate Democrats followed the cherished American tradition of shuffling around a few leadership positions in the wake of a tumultuous escapade.

Whether the dismissals are for legitimate reasons or whether they simply create a scapegoat, these gestures restore, to some degree, the basic credibility of our lawmakers, and allow us to move on. We need to believe our elected representatives are paying attention, and that if something goes wrong, i.e. the obscenely long budget standoff, our representatives will fix the bugs in the system ASAP. As President Harry S Truman put it, "The buck stops here!"

Unfortunately, Ms. Robson is doing her damnedest to pass the buck. According to the WisPolitics.com budget blog, after the budget was signed into law Friday, Ms. Robson cited sexism as a reason for her deposition. "All women leaders in the Legislature have had coups against them," she said. "It’s the nature of being a woman leader — or I should say the fallout of being a woman leader."

Sexism? Really? I admit I haven’t shared Ms. Robson’s experiences of sexism in the workplace. I wasn’t even born yet when she was first elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 1987, but this is 2007, and if a woman can be elected Senate majority leader by her fellow Democrats, then she can subsequently be removed for entirely performance-related reasons. If the Senate Democrats were sexist against women, they wouldn’t have elected Ms. Robson in the first place, and if Mr. Decker had been Senate majority leader when the budget situation reached crisis proportions, it is certain his leadership skills would be questioned, too.

The reality is that the Wisconsin government was likely a week away from a partial shutdown and layoffs at the time the budget was passed, as Gov. Jim Doyle has stated. In light of this situation, with the precarious nature of the budget compromises fresh in our minds, Ms. Robson finger-pointing at her fellow Senate Democrats is downright petty. She has not recognized her replacement as the necessary political move it was. Moreover, when she claimed she was called "too nice to be a leader," she interpreted the criticism as a sweeping attack on the ability of women to lead, rather than admitting she may have had personal qualities that were not put to good use during a summer without a budget. It is one thing to make mistakes and pay for them with a demotion, but the accusations thrown around by the senator damage her credibility. If Ms. Robson honestly believes her gender was a factor in her deposition, she is clearly not taking the budget mess seriously enough and in fact, should not be the majority leader.

Credibility is the real issue here. No matter what reasoning was behind it, the replacement of Mr. Dobson was still just a token gesture, and merely one example of passing the buck. It isn’t enough, though.

Rotating a new Senate majority leader into the public eye treats the symptom and not the disease. It is just as simplistic to suggest that Ms. Robson was the reason the budget took so long to pass, as it was for Ms. Robson to suggest that female legislators are being hunted to extinction.

The inevitably controversial Wisconsin budget will be up for debate again in a matter of months, and there is absolutely nothing new to guarantee that October won’t become a biennial "impasse season." We will have to wait and see.

Tell me though, Senate Majority Leader Decker: When the time comes, will the buck stop with you?

Carla Dogan ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics.