Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. He learned from Calvin Coolidge before him who catapulted to fame by firing Boston cops who went on strike. They understood the one thing the public cannot tolerate is widespread disorder. Yet that’s what Walker invited by his failure to arrest protesters, By showing patience and nice-guy tolerance for misdemeanors being committed daily inside the Capitol, he sent exactly the wrong message to unions, telegraphing weakness instead of strength.

Holman Jenkins in today’s Wall Street Journal has an article on why dereliction in such small things matters. As he explains it, the famous “broken windows” philosophy put to such great use by Mayor Giuliani to clean up New York, derived from a Standford study on neighborhood vandalism. James Q. Wilson, writing on public disorder, helped popularize the phrase:, Wilson states, “We coined the phrase ‘broken windows,’ suggesting public order is a fragile thing, and if you don’t fix the first broken window, soon all the windows will be broken.”

Walker allowed too much chaos for too long– unlike Andrew Cuomo who demanded police arrest protesters for minor infractions. These thugs only understand toughness. Walker needs to deal forcefully with these threats of mutiny or they will be realized to his great disadvantage..

The whole point of the National Guard is to deal with state emergencies. There was a real danger to the legislators moving in and out of the capitol building. That was real, not imagined. Death threats were received.

One of the most unsettling sights for the citizenry is public disorder on the scale that we witnessed in Madison. People will tolerate almost anything, but they hate disorder. The left knows this and uses it to win political points. Walker lost altitude politically by dithering and not acting forcefully.

There were actually two struggles going on simultaneously. One was the effort to pass the bill, the other was the fight for public opinion. The left knew that if it banged enough drums and made enough of a ruckus, the public would be alarmed and demand something be resolved quickly. In its frustration it would blame the governor–and it did. It wanted the issue to get off its tv screens even if it gave the unions a win.

Under the broken windows theory, had Walker acted forcefully to impose order, he would have gained political altitude instead of losing it. It would have reassured the public that things were under control.

I constantly read comments like yours about how things might look–the fear of how it might look seeing soldiers restraining the citizenry, as you put it. But clearly this was no polite Tea Party activism, it was an angry mob. I doubt the public would have perceived the situation as you imagine.

Secondly, I’m not as sanguine as you concerning the local police. It was clear they were part of the problem and were actually enabling the protesters, allowing them into the building, allowing them to stay overnight after Walker put out the call to have them removed from the premises. They fueled the situation by telegraphing their sympathy–which the mob understood.

I agree with you that the political end was considerably at fault. I said as much, blaming Walker for not seeing that arrests were made–the way Cuomo did right away in NY. But I’m also aware he was dealing with a recalcitrant police force. The press didn’t make much of this–but the videos definitely showed a lot of enabling on the part of the local police.Walker just could not rely on them to secure public safety.

They can trash the capitol building, threaten legislators’ lives, intimidate business owners–and Walker does nothing about it. He doesn’t even call them on it. If it’s the Madison politicians who are derelict, Walker needs to get on their cases. I’m so weary of GOP wimpishness.