LEGISLATORS ARE FOLLOWERS; GOVERNORS LEAD:

Republican governors strike at heart of Democratic Party (JONATHAN MARTIN & BEN SMITH, 2/20/11, Politico)

These showdowns in the states — expressed most spectacularly this week in Wisconsin’s capital — have brought to life a longstanding cliché of government: The most consequential political action and the most serious policy debates are not taking place in Washington, which appears unlikely to tackle any big-ticket items, but rather beyond the Beltway, in the state capitols, which Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously labeled the “laboratories of democracy.”

With a budget-cutting and reform zeal unseen since the mid-1990s, a group of Republican chief executives are using difficult economic times to press an ambitious policy agenda that makes their GOP counterparts in Washington seem like timid incrementalists.

Their goal: to shatter a bipartisan consensus on public labor that’s shaped politics in the West, the Northeast and the Upper Midwest since the 1960s.

Welfare reform was the centerpiece legislation at issue for the new GOP governors in the 90s. Today, public employee rights and benefits are on the firing line. Between the two, there is an important distinction: the political stakes are much greater now.

Aside from social justice advocates and traditional liberals, welfare recipients had little political clout. To take on the well-organized and politically connected teachers and state workers, however, is to strike at the heart of the Democratic Party in many states.

Fairly or not--and I'd obviously argue it's entirely fair--the candidacies of Bob Dole and John McCain and the presidencies of Barack Obama, LBJ, and JFK--make it extremely difficult for a congressman to argue he's qualified for the presidency.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 20, 2011 8:01 AM