The Rauner years 2015–2019
Illinois has had only a few very good governors, the rest being (to borrow from Robert Howard’s 1988 history of the state’s chief executives) mostly good and competent men. However, even ordinary goodness and competence was conspicuous by its absence from the governor’s mansion in the years between 1991 and 2019. In those 28 long years, a string of crooked and/or inept governors of both parties soured an entire generation of Illinoisans on politics and government.
Among the authors of this disillusionment was Bruce Rauner, the vulture capitalist and political dilettante who was elected very narrowly in 2014. Nominally a Republican, Rauner was a militant libertarian who promised to lower taxes, liberate business, energize the bureaucracy, and chastise the public employee unions.
Promise was all Rauner did do. Uninformed, dishonest, inattentive, and arrogant, he proved to be easily the worst Illinois governor in the modern era and arguably its worst ever. He hired fools to manage the state. Public debt skyrocketed. The bureaucracy was not energized but gutted. The voters of Illinois usually require eight years to recognize a fraud when they see one but they had enough of Rauner after only two or three. He was driven out of office in 2018 by an election margin of 15 points by a man his better in every way, and fled Illinois.
I did not usually write much about Rauner’s predecessors, as both Illinois Times and Illinois Issues magazine had in their pages writers better informed about state government than I was. However, I found Rauner to be an uncommonly provoking public figure. The best of the pieces I did probably was the first. Sadly for Illinois, everything I feared about him on election night proved true.
For no particular reason, these pieces are arranged by date of publication, oldest first.
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Term limits are bad politics and worse government
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times September 26, 2013
If you liked Dan Walker, you’ll love Gov. Bruce Rauner
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 13, 2014
Rauner wants to give ailing Illinois a dose of California
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times September 11, 2014
“My way is the highway,” says the governor
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 12, 2015
Should the State of Illinois sell the Thompson Center?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times April 9, 2015
The governor doesn’t want to pay to bury the poor
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times April 16, 2015
Rauner’s property tax freeze plan hides a nasty surprise
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times June 18, 2015
Getting labor back into politics
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times August 13, 2015
Has the governor taken the wrong guy hostage?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times October 15, 2015
It’s capital vs. labor again in the capital
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times November 19, 2015
The return of the businessmen-reformer
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times February 4, 2016
Does the French Revolution hold lessons for Citizen Rauner?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times January 7, 2016
Judging our elected emperors by their clothes
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 10, 2016
Are the Rauners giving Illinois a mansion it really wants?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times July 28, 2016

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