The Washington Post’s George Will writes about Colorado, its governor, and its beer (all of which are related):

[John] Hickenlooper is a double rarity, the first brewer to become a governor (well, if you don’t count Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the amateur), and, in this time of political dyspepsia, he is a happy man whose constituents seem reasonably happy with him.

Hickenlooper, who says, “I was 50 times better at running a brew pub than I was as a geologist,” seems to be pretty good at running this state. This is probably because, having been in business, he appreciates the spontaneous order of a market economy, which does not need to be run by politicians.

For much of the political class, the private sector, with job creation through risk-taking, is as foreign as Mongolia. Hickenlooper says of politicians: “Everyone should spend two years running a big, popular restaurant.” Doing so, you learn about placating people: Not all customers are going to be happy, but the proverb has it right (“A soft answer turneth away wrath”) and, he says, “there is no advantage in having enemies.” Besides, in the restaurant business, even if you have a bad night, tomorrow night is another chance.

Hickenlooper has not endorsed the attempt to get a court to overturn what voters did in limiting, with a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the legislature’s ability to raise taxes.

He says, “We are such a purple state” — Colorado is about one-third Republican, one-third Democrat and one-third unaffiliated — “we can avoid the big fights.” In spite of all the homogenizing forces of American life, from the population’s mobility to mass media, regional differences remain remarkably durable. …

The United States is the only nation founded on a good idea — the pursuit of happiness — and, not coincidentally, it also was founded on beer. Within two years of the founding of Jamestown in 1607, the colony wrote to London asking that a brewer be sent to Virginia. The Mayflower, which was looking for a haven farther south, landed at Plymouth Rock instead because, according to William Bradford’s journals, “our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.” Jefferson brewed beer at Monticello, and his boon companion, James Madison, diluted his limited-government convictions enough to consider a national brewery to provide an alternative to whiskey.

Colorado is fortunate to have someone with an actual business background as governor. (As of this moment, Richard Leinenkugel seems a more attractive candidate for U.S. Senate than former Gov. Tommy Thompson or former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, even though as far as I know Leinenkugel has no plans to run.) If more elected officials had business backgrounds instead of government backgrounds, perhaps responsible budgeting would not be such a foreign concept in this state. On the other hand, former state Rep. and Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker was electable in the eyes of non-Republicans, as opposed to businessman Neumann, who is about to find out the same thing in his U.S. Senate campaign. When someone with deep business experience runs for statewide office, Democrats and their apparatchiks dig up that business person’s disgruntled customers or former employees in a general election campaign. (See Johnson, Ron.)

Wisconsin and Colorado have similar political cultures. (In fact, Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm was born in Madison.) The big difference, however, is that Colorado politicians are prevented from willy-nilly spending and taxing by their state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which was enacted by voter referendum. Wisconsin voters have never been able to vote on a Taxpayer Bill of Rights because Republicans haven’t pushed hard enough for one. One result is that Colorado’s business climate is better than Wisconsin’s. Another is that who gets elected becomes less important because the most wasteful spending ideas and the most economy-killing tax increases are prevented from being enacted into law.

As for Will’s beer references, well, you know how I feel about that.