A tale of two governors: meet Tommy Thompson, dismantler of the welfare state, and Jim Edgar, the riverboat king - Wisconsin and Illinois politics

National Review, May 16, 1994 by Daniel D. Polsby

When Mr. Edgar spies a problem, his instinct has been to try to manage it better. And of course better management can improve bad situations. But to those who believe that the predicaments of the modern welfare state are more in conception than in execution, his administration seems ever more unfocused.

As a potential national candidate, Edgar offers the attraction of predictability. Illinois Republicans have owned the honesty theme for 135 years, and Edgar more than respectably fulfills the tradition. No one will ever find the bimbos and shady deals in his past because there aren't any. But is there anything else there?

Then again, it is not all that hard to imagine someone running for President as the candidate of no ideas. The Clintons, after all, have thus far distinguished themselves by their cascade of preposterous ideas. Perhaps in 1996 the electorate, longing to be spared further reforms, will wistfully remember the time--is it really 35 years already?--when Republicans were well and truly the do-nothing party and the country was much the better for it. If some such specter seems to be haunting Republican focus groups three years hence, Jim Edgar's hour shall have struck.