Democracy took a big hit last week here in Wisconsin. While I vehemently disagree with U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., on most issues, he made a great point last week regarding U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold’s, D-Wis., and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl’s, D-Wis., decision to nominate former Wisconsin Supreme Court — and current University of Wisconsin Law School professor — Louis Butler to the vacated seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. Butler has since been appointed to the seat by President Barack Obama.

In a press release issued on Oct. 1, Sensenbrenner stated: “I’m disappointed in the process the Obama Administration and Wisconsin’s two Senators took in the nomination of Louis B. Butler to serve as U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Butler lost a statewide election, held by the people of Wisconsin, to continue serving on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Now, the man who was voted off the bench in Wisconsin is being given a promotion, a lifetime appointment and a pay raise. The people of Wisconsin deserve better.”

Butler, as many of you know by now, was booted from the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the spring elections of 2008 by current Justice Michael Gableman in an increasingly controversial victory. Reflecting the ridiculousness of “campaign season” as a whole, Gableman’s campaign team produced a television commercial claiming Butler, in his days as a public defender, “worked to put criminals on the street,” including a child molester.

Basic fact-checking showed this to be a patently false statement. But campaign season, as President Obama stated during the run-up to his 2008 victory, is the “silly season.” At their core, campaigns are dishonest, deceitful and manipulative.

Intelligent, well-informed voters don’t take campaign ads seriously. They look into issues, choose which candidate best reflects their values and ideology, and then proceed to vote for that candidate. Campaign ads then, as with all political PR, are aimed at the ignorant, poorly-informed voter. This voter is easily manipulated by slime and takes campaign developments seriously, as if they are big news events or groundbreaking political developments.

Since this is what campaigns are all about, Gableman’s campaign team had every right to put out a misleading ad — because frankly, this type of shit happens all the time.

Tell me: Was Gableman’s sin any worse than John Kerry being “swiftboated” out of his White House bid in 2004 by George Bush? Or how about John McCain affiliates scaring people enough to believe that Obama was a “terrorist” and an “Arab?” Of course not.

So what right does the Wisconsin Judicial Commission have to issue a lawsuit against Gableman for lying in a campaign ad? Lying is commonplace in every campaign, and therefore this lawsuit is a waste of all of our tax dollars. Gableman earned his seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court just as much as anyone else who spends scores of money on attack campaign ads and wins elections.

The Gableman “scandal” is directly related to Feingold’s and Kohl’s appointment of Butler to the U.S. District Court. It’s revenge, in other words, served up by the state’s top Democratic hit men.

But it was the will of the people, no matter how flawed the system, through which Gableman won the election. Like it or not, he was the man that people who actually showed up to vote in spring 2008 chose as their Supreme Court Justice. If the average person didn’t take the time to do some fact-checking on Gableman’s claims, something Gableman was banking on, that is their own fault, not Gableman’s. Gableman was simply playing the slimy campaign game. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

So as an electorate, we were all slapped in the face when Feingold and Kohl nominated Butler last week, and when Obama approved the decision, now leaving it up to the full U.S. Senate body for approval. He was defeated in an election decided by the people of Wisconsin. And lest we chalk this development up merely to Butler’s qualifications, note there were plenty of other qualified individuals on the original list presented to Feingold and Kohl, including UW Law School Professor Anuj Desai.

At the end of the day, choosing Butler was a quid pro quo political gift from Feingold and Kohl, democracy took a hit here in Wisconsin, and we should all be outraged.

Steve Horn ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and legal studies.