BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The Wisconsin recall election last week made history. It was apparently the first time the recall of a sitting governor was unsuccessful.

It was a resounding victory for Governor Scott Walker, the Lieutenant Governor and the Wisconsin senators who were retained in office (one was not). And while it may not have been an affirmation of their governing style, it was a vote of confidence in what they were doing and why.

But the Wisconsin spectacle may ultimately be more notable for what it didn’t do.

It didn’t prejudge, predict or pre-determine the nation’s presidential election. The media would have liked us to think that as Wisconsin voted, so votes the nation, but the reality is the issues on which Wisconsin voters passed judgment, are not those that will determine the outcome of the national elections. Wisconsin is not the nation, Romney is not Walker, Obama is not Barrett, and June is not November.

It didn’t say as much about big money and buying elections, as the losers would like us to believe. Sure, Walker outraised his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Bob Barrett, by seven to one, but Barrett had something else in the bank – a formidable resource in organized labor and the ground game they are able to mobilize. Barrett had one other advantage, as powerful as the unions – the media.

Here’s what else the election didn’t tell us. It didn’t tell us much about the future of organized labor in general, or public employee unions in the specific.

Organizing labor has been integral to our public and private way of economic life for 100 years and it will continue to be as long as greed, incompetency and the abuse of power remain a part of our way of life even though  specific unions may come and go or grow and shrink,

Still, the unions, as usual, overplayed their hand in Wisconsin. They sought to defend the indefensible—defined benefit pension plans that promise what neither the public nor the private sector can any longer deliver.  They were bound to lose.

The election didn’t set much of an example for how we should conduct our political affairs either. It was more a study in what we shouldn’t do. It was the politics of confrontation on steroids. No noble and true process of governance should bring a city, state or nation to its knees. No act of governance, whether you hold power or are the loyal opposition, should result in government being put on hold for a year, legislators fleeing the state, sit-ins and lock- outs, and obese national interests intervening in the affairs of the local citizenry. It cost Wisconsin taxpayers millions. It pitted neighbor against neighbor. It brought progress to a halt. It caused unnecessary suffering.

Polling indicated that most people in Wisconsin thought the recall was unnecessary and inappropriate. It should never have taken place.

Analysts with the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation wrote in the New York Daily News June 10 that the “message” from Wisconsin was that we ought to make more government decisions by public referenda.

I had to read it twice. What they were suggesting is moving away from our democratic-republic form of government and  toward a pure democracy in which our elected leaders are more facilitators and accommodators than policy makers.

They seem to think there is no difference between public opinion and public judgment.

We don’t need less republicanism – the form of government, not the party – we need more. We need legislators and presidents and governors who have the courage to come together, produce consensus and actually govern, not just talk about it. We need leaders who can heal wounds, not open them, and we need policy makers who can generate solutions that appeal to the majority, not simply appease a minority.

Let’s all look back a year from now and see if the great Wisconsin spectacle was worth it. Let’s see if Scott Walker governs in the next two years the way he governed in his first two. Let’s see if the Wisconsin model of rebellious gridlock plays in Peoria this November. Let’s see if any of this made any sense.

PS. We should all ask the Washington Post why it called the Wisconsin results a “close vote” and why it said Walker survived the recall. It wasn’t a close vote. It was a landslide by six or seven percent, and Walker didn’t just survive the recall he repudiated it.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.