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As my mother always said, “What’s not to love?” She was usually talking about me, of course.

But today, I’ m talking about Phoenix.

Well, there is a lot to love. It’s a great town filled with really nice people. The weather in the spring is wonderful. It’s a beautiful place, easy to get around. The Mexican food is the best in the Southwest. The crazy wild flowers blooming in the Sonoran Desert are spectacular. The smell in the desert alone is worth the airfare to Arizona. A night sitting on the balcony of our hotel room, watching six or seven planes in the air at any time, taking off or landing at Sky Harbor Airport against the back drop of the sun setting on the Valley’s south rim is soft and sublime. Then there is baseball. Everywhere you go in the Phoenix metro area in March, there is a ballpark with Cactus League spring training. It skews a bit old but my wife and I love going.

But the first 85 degree-plus day, the other side of Phoenix emerges. There are few smooth edges about Phoenix. Everything seems to be “out there”. Very direct messages ring from bill boards and on TV. It’s a pretty rough place, even by Milwaukee standards. Jan and I drive around and look at whatever there is to look at. We’ve wandered Phoenix’s neighborhoods, and there is edginess to the place that’s palpable. Maybe that’s partly because of the violence at the border and kidnappings in the City.

Homeless people at every freeway entrance stare glassy eyed at passing cars. Their stillness looks more like death in the desert than life. The weather beaten look of the poor and homeless reminds you that maybe summer in Phoenix is worse than winter in Milwaukee if you don’t have some place to live.

As spring begins to give way to summer, you remember quickly that poverty anywhere is not fun. But the unrelenting sun, and the attitude of mainstream culture in Arizona, and the West, makes sympathy and progressive public policy hard to come by.

People who made the West are hard not to admire. When you think about how life must have been for settlers, ranchers, and pioneers, one imagines the hardships they endured. Attitudes don’t change overnight, and a week in Arizona reminds you of the dividing lines of American life, and the history and culture that shapes our country. Whether I admire or detest the John McCains’ and Sarah Palins’ of the world, it’s easy to see how they don’t want to give up what they think they’ve earned.

Then there is Del Webb. If anything best exemplifies what’s wrong with Arizona, it’s Del Webb. He had to be Jane Jacobs’ western nightmare.

Del Webb, the real estate housing magnate built Sun City, Az in 1960, and followed with retirement communities in Surprise, Anthem, developments in Florida, and South Carolina, Nevada. Built casinos and palled around with mobsters and politicians alike. Born in Fresno, he was the archetypical Western get-it- done kind of guy.

If you drive east from Phoenix towards Tucson or worse, west toward Yuma along I-10, you see mile after mile of wood frame houses that blight the desert. Hundreds of thousands of houses built on top of one another! This is where the financial crisis and global warming meet. People should not be living there. Admire the lonely pioneers. Pity the huddled retirees. While we were in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, there was a feature report on the late TV news about the near collapse of a pretty little mountain town called Payson, north east of the City. Municipal government had to lay off one half of its work force and a business owner was in tears talking about what it would take to bring her town back from the brink. “We need to get back to building” she said. Put people back to work. No. Isn’t that what got them into trouble to begin with? Build more housing for retirees so we can continue the spiral of foreclosures and let them run out of water some day. A real smart economic growth plan! All while posting “Minutemen” at the border deterring Mexican workers who pick their crops and, ironically, maintain their landscapes.

I have been watching the debate on high speed rail in Wisconsin, and marvel how dumb we can be here. And I thank God I live in Wisconsin, visit Arizona, and cheer for the Brewers.