Is Gov. Scott Walker “more Nixonian than even Richard Nixon himself”? According to John Dean, the man who served as White House council to Nixon and who became a key witness for the prosecution during the Watergate trial, Walker is just that.

In a two-part article for the legal analysis website justia.com, Dean lays out his idea that Walker is a double-high authoritarian. According to Dean, this means that a person tests high both as a “social dominator,” meaning “they are dominating, they oppose equality, they are desirous of personal power [and] they are amoral” and as a “submissive follower” who is “submissive to authority but aggressive on that authority’s behalf.”

Dean believes that this prototype personality is very damaging to a democratically run state, saying, “They are often outstanding at running businesses and when serving as high-ranking officials in the military, … but they are failures as presidents and governors. … They can be dangerous to democracy.”

On the point of domination, Dean pointed to Walker’s history of seeking leadership positions, ranging from his creation of a group called “Jesus USA” when he was eight, through student government at Marquette University and on to the assembly, Milwaukee County executive and eventually governor. Dean said, “This is the behavior, writ large, of a dominator.”

On opposition to equality, he laid out Walker’s opposition to the rights of gays and lesbians. One such example is his appointment of Laurie McCallum to the Labor and Industry Review Commission. McCallum wrote a dissenting opinion in a workplace harassment case against a gay employee in which she stated that sexual “preference” is not a “protected category in workplace discrimination cases.”

Showing Walker’s desire for power, Dean explained that while the obvious portion of the union-busting bill is the removal of collective bargaining power for unions, there are more subtle power grabs in play. Dean said “The power grab to fill three dozen civil service jobs with political appointees” gives Walker control of things like “open-records requests, the selection of general counsels for key agencies and the selection of communications spokespeople in key departments.” Dean said that depending on the outcome of the recall, he believes Walker is “just getting started.”

For amorality, Dean declined to take into account Walker’s recent bills on Planned Parenthood and also the ongoing John Doe investigation, saying “No conclusions can or should be drawn from it” at this time. Instead, Dean focused on the fact that PolitiFact Wisconsin only found that Walker had told the truth on six out of 44 statements they had evaluated.

While these findings point to Walker being an authoritarian, what makes him stand above as what Dean calls a “conservative without a conscience” is Walker’s ability to submit to the more radical right-wing leaders above him. While chronicling Walker’s extreme position on law and order, such as pushing for a 50 percent increase in maximum criminal sentences, Dean came to a simple conclusion: “I cannot find a single radical right-wing position that Walker rejects.”

I have been saying for the past year that my biggest problem with Walker is his rejection of the collaborative nature of the Wisconsin government that has been a staple in the state for a long time. As someone who worked within one of the most power-driven, amoral presidency in history, Dean’s look into the nature of our governor is an invaluable insight.

Walker is not the normal conservative, but one who is driven to greater personal power without a care to how it affects everyone. As Dean said in closing, “The June 5, 2012, election is a true opportunity to discourage another leader who is a conservative without conscience, for these leaders always have a healthy following.”

We must stand up in June to stop a man who doesn’t care about the average Wisconsinite and never has. Walker’s sole aim is to continue to climb the GOP ladder by playing to its most extreme and wealthy supporters, not to find a way to improve the lives of the people of this state in tough economic times.

Let’s remove the man who has pushed our conversation to the extreme for his own personal gain and get back to the reality that we all have different ideas, but the only goal should be a better tomorrow. As Dean said at the end of his piece, “Good luck, Wisconsin.”

John Waters ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.