As a society, we hold politicians to notoriously low standards. Whether it’s soliciting gay sex in a Minneapolis airport (Larry Craig, R-Idaho), sexting aides and interns (Mark Foley, R-Florida), or blowing as much as $80,000 on high-class — oxymoron warning — prostitutes (Eliot Spitzer, D-New York), it takes a lot to surprise the American public. So, the question is: how is State Assemblyman Jeff Wood, I-Chippewa Falls, and his five OWI arrests any different?
Well, for one thing, he could have actually killed someone. For another, all the other aforementioned politicians had the common decency and basic sense of shame to resign (at least initially).
Well not Rep. Wood. Like a friend trying to grab his keys, Wood keeps swatting our hands away. After resisting calls to step down following OWI number four last September, Wood jumped bail and picked up the magic number five before Halloween.
We understand people make mistakes, and by no means should we rush to expel every member the state Legislature who has so much as an underage. Nevertheless, at some point a line needs to be drawn, and we feel like somewhere around the fifth OWI is probably lenient enough.
The Assembly doesn’t seem to share that same sentiment, however. Perhaps afraid of their own closet skeletons, or perhaps loath to lose the entertainment at their annual Christmas party, a motion to expel Wood failed to garner the required two-thirds vote early Wednesday. Instead, the brave lawmakers decided to censure Wood, a move that will go on his permanent record along with that one time he got sent to Gov. Jim Doyle’s office for shooting spitballs — basically, it doesn’t matter.
Given his actions, Wood should be busy explaining why we shouldn’t fire him. Instead, he and his lawyers are grasping for any excuse they can find. Well, it doesn’t matter if he was hopped up on moonshine or Robitussin. If you can’t see straight, you shouldn’t drive. And if you repeatedly demonstrate you are incapable of making that distinction, you shouldn’t be allowed to represent the people of Wisconsin, either.
Picking up two OWIs in one month, for a career total of five, serves as a clear indication that one is unfit to decide state policy, among other things. Moreover, allowing Wood to maintain his seat only reinforces the impression in Wisconsin that “drunk driving just isn’t that big of a deal.”
Drunken driving is that big of a big deal. It accounted for nearly half of traffic-related deaths in 2007, and Wood even said as much in December when he voted to strengthen our (still) laughably weak OWI laws.
The most frustrating aspect of this whole scenario is that just hours earlier the Assembly seemed poised to expel Wood. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, a Republican partisan, had been pushing such a resolution since last fall. Coupled with Tuesday’s announcement that Democratic leader Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, had plans to bring a similar resolution to the floor, it seemed Wood was heading for the chopping block. In the end though, the bill didn’t even come close to passing.
It turns out there is something weaker than our state’s OWI laws after all. Unfortunately, it happens to be the Assembly’s spine.
