Often it is the phrasing of a statement and not its truth that gets the public’s attention.
Take the recent furor surrounding former Chancellor John Wiley’s savage indictment of the state Legislature and the business lobby group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. In a massive column, Wiley slammed both, drawing comparisons that made their members appear to be little better than mobsters.
There are a number of valid criticisms against Wiley’s delivery. The shrillness of the attacks, as well as the fallout Chancellor Biddy Martin will have to clean up, come to mind. Pragmatic defenders of the university also have reason to be worried — despite Wiley’s call for bipartisanship — as the article reeks of a childish effort to offend the Legislature’s conservatives, already so anxious to guillotine the university’s budget.
If one manages to disregard the indignation over the tone of Wiley’s last hurrah, however, one troubling question remains — how true were the accusations?
A number of them, such as his claim that state legislators asked for campaign cash in return for political support, are hard to verify. But some of Wiley’s other statements, specifically those regarding the WMC, have found their mark.
Wiley’s first shots at WMC were centered around its advocacy on issues such as business regulation and taxation. And while it is understandable for a business lobby to oppose increased government intervention in the affairs of corporations, Wiley made a powerful point: Of the 10 states with higher taxation than Wisconsin, nine of them also have higher per capita income. The underlying truth is that, while the trend toward more government intervention is troubling, state taxation levels have a minimal influence on the economies of those states.
Wiley also labeled WMC-funded advertisements against state Supreme Court candidate Louis Butler as “unconscionably scurrilous and personal.” And upon review, the ads were, well, unconscionable. One ad — financed by WMC — created a seeming litany of woes concerning Butler’s time on the court. The message wasn’t personal, but it was absurdly vitriolic nonetheless. Attacking “Loophole Louie’s” penchant for using flaws in the legal system to let off a string of violent criminals, the ads proceeded to imply that Butler’s record was founded on an underlying love of criminality that had resulted in the death of a group of people roughly the same in number as the population of Milwaukee.
But the most powerful result of Wiley’s column was its ability to draw WMC into an outright lie. Exasperated at the fundamental message that WMC’s lobbying efforts were detrimental to the university, the WMC’s response letter claimed that the organization had “actively lobbied for final passage of the UW budget.” Funny — after WMC issued the response, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel immediately produced a copy of their lobbying disclosures, and the University of Wisconsin was not even mentioned among the 36 items on the agenda.
Regardless of the arguments and counterarguments flying across an already beleaguered state capitol, it is hard to see how Wiley’s arguments benefitted the university, particularly after the somewhat contentious selection of its first openly gay chancellor. But despite that, it is even more challenging to divine how spending millions of dollars to make an accomplished judge look like an old chum of murderers and wife-beaters will benefit the political discourse of the state. It is likewise difficult to understand how spending a grand total of nothing on lobbying for the UW, and then lying about it, will somehow improve the quality of higher education.
But the most difficult thing is watching a strikingly accurate narrative, a story of appalling means being used to attain legitimate ends, going unheeded because of indignation at the author’s choice of words.
Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in economics.
