What's the big deal? Doesn't everybody drink and drive?

My friend Bill Lueders of Isthmus, the Madison alternative weekly, says he can't understand what all the fuss is about his asking Kathleen Falk is she has ever driven a car after drinking.

Here's his rationale for asking, which seems to be the "everybody in Wisconsin drinks and drives, so what's the big deal? First offense isn't even a crime."

Lueders writes:

It surprises me that my question has stirred such a fuss. For the record, in case anyone cares, I like Kathleen Falk and think she'd make a great attorney general. I also like Peg Lautenschlager and think she already is a great attorney general. I haven't heard Falk or anyone else give a good reason that Lautenschlager needs to go, other than that she drove drunk and this will be used against her. It seems to me there is a good deal of hypocrisy in this reaction, given that drinking too much and driving is not an uncommon occurrence in Wisconsin -- heck, for a first offense, it's not even a crime. And what irony there would be if we were to oust a sitting AG on these grounds only to elect another who has engaged in the same behavior but just didn't get caught.

Lautenschlager would not be the first public official, or even the first Wisconsin attorney general,to win an election after a drunk driving conviction. But she would undoubtedly be the first to achieve that after the videotape of her arrest had played repeatedly on statewide television while the story dragged on and on and led to other stories about misuse of the state car assigned to her, which she drove into the ditch.

Bob Kasten, Jerry Kleczka, Bronson LaFollette and any number of state legislators survived DWI arrests. But they all handled them by promptly apologizing and accepting responsibility, putting the stories to rest. Lautenschlager was another story, as this WisPolitics analysis, done at the time, pointed out.