Views on News, wispundits • December 18th, 2008

Enabling the enablers

by Chris Lato

Recently, the Journal Sentinel ran a big series on Wisconsin’s culture of alcohol and the resulting devastation on our roadways. In an editorial, the paper calls for tougher penalties including making at least a third OWI a felony. They call out legislators as ‘enablers’ who support the culture of drinking to excess.

Then, this week one of the editors suggests Rep. Jeff Wood, who has a history of drunk driving and was caught last week, loaded and urinating on the side of the road with two baggies of pot and a pipe on his person, should hang around the Legislature and push for anti drunk-driving legislation.

Huh? Isn’t that a form of enabling? Reasonable people might say Rep. Wood has issues that need to be addressed, and that this is a pattern for someone not currently fit to serve. (Although, perhaps, a tougher stance is coming.)

Someone who makes the laws, then breaks those same laws, loses a lot of credibility. With multiple busts on one’s record, it looks worse. Throw drug charges into the mix, and you have to think at least a couple hundred voters are re-considering their choice of Rep. Wood last November.

Changing Wisconsin laws related to alcohol will be a Herculean task under any circumstances. To suggest that, with the ink still drying on the arrest report, a freshly-arrested legislator is the best crusader for this task is curious.

One other point of interest: James Wigderson catalogs the level of outrage from Wisconsin’s editorial boards.

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