According to Senator Tom Bakk, the supreme qualification for a legislator is…
…being a career politician.
Not principle. Not being sent by the voters on a mission to change things.
“Process”.
And all those Republican freshmen in the Senate – men and women who’ve built careers and businesses and lives outside government – are just going to get shredded when Linda Berglin (who’s been in the Legislature since Nixon was president) starts niggling over the finer points of every single Health and Human Service bill. Or so Tom Bakk thinks.
On second thought, it was as much a Nick Coleman moment as an Oberstar moment. Bakk is saying “don’t criticize us – we know stuff“.
Amy Koch beat Bakk like a drum:
Money quote:
The freshmen aren’t the problem. They’re just the people who put their families, their jobs and their businesses on hold to come in and be the cleanup crew. If career politiclans were the answer, we wouldn’t be in this mess”
Bakk’s main point – you, the peasant, even if you are elected to government, just aren’t competent to govern.
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Most of my discussions with Jim Abler R(ino) have come to about the same point Bakk made.
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