Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Total Recall - 5/2/2008

I live in Huntington Woods, a small older suburb two miles north of Detroit. Now, under the free speech rights granted to me by the Constitution, I have every right to suggest that my city be turned into a collective farm. I can campaign incessantly for the council to buy up everyone’s house, demolish it and plant okra.

All six thousand Huntington Woods residents would be welcome to become agricultural workers and share equally in the profits. This brilliant idea has two minor flaws. First of all, it would be completely unworkable, and second, it would be crazy.

However, as far as democracy is concerned, trying to turn my town into an okra collective would be less bad than trying to recall Andy Dillon. And here’s why. Our democracy depends on representative government. I can’t possibly know how to solve every problem the State of Michigan has to face, and neither can you.

That’s why we have legislators. Last year, Dillon voted to raise taxes, as did a majority of his colleagues. He knew that would be politically difficult. But he did so because the state legally had to balance its budget, and there was no other way, No way, that is, except crippling our great universities, and damaging our state‘s ability to compete in the economy of the future.

Now, I’ve heard people say, “well, of course Dillon was willing to raise taxes. He’s a politician. He has never had to meet a payroll."

Except that he has had to meet many payrolls. Dillon is a businessman and a lawyer. He was a guy who took over struggling companies, including the former McLouth steel, and turned them around. He has fought to save manufacturing jobs.

But the man leading the fight to get him recalled, Leon Drolet, has never met a payroll. In fact, except once working in a clothing store, Drolet has never had anything other than a government job. He was a state legislator till term limits threw him out.

Now he is a Macomb County Commissioner. He doesn’t even live in Dillon’s county. Here is how much money, by the way, those promoting recalls have raised in Dillon’s district: Five dollars.

Now, there is nothing wrong with trying to defeat Andy Dillon if you think he did the wrong thing. That’s the American way. You have two regularly scheduled opportunities to beat him this year. One in the August primary, one in the November general election.

But those who have trouble reading the calendar are trying to recall him in August. That means Dillon could be removed from office and nominated for a new term the same day.

If he then wins in November, the recall effort will have succeeded in removing him for … five months.

The real problem with recalls is that they undermine representative democracy. The more we use them, the less likely it is that our elected leaders will make difficult decisions.

They will just rely on the howling of the mob. Which is the last thing any state, especially Michigan, needs today.

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Interview: Andy Dillon - 5/2/2008

Last year the Michigan legislature raised taxes in order to balance the state’s budget. House Speaker Andy Dillon was one of the legislators who voted in favor of raising taxes. Now, a group of tax protesters want to remove Dillon from office. They say they have enough signatures to get a recall on the August ballot. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Speaker Dillon.

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Essay: Political Privacy - 4/28/2008

When it comes to government, I normally think the more openness we have the better. I think the Freedom of Information Act, both on the federal and state levels, may have been the best thing to happen to democracy since the Bill of Rights.

But openness has its limits, and everybody has a zone of privacy that any free society is obligated to respect. And whatever your politics, one of the most sacrosanct of these has always been the voting booth. Democracy requires a secret ballot.

Nobody has the right to put a camera under the curtain. In Michigan, we take that even more seriously than most other states. We don’t even have party registration.

If any one tells you they are a registered Republican or Democrat, they really aren’t. When I walk out of a voting booth in August, nobody will have the right to know who I voted for.

And I am also allowed to keep secret whether I voted in the Democratic or Republican Primaries. That’s how it’s been here forever, giving voters a maximum of privacy and freedom.

And I’ll bet that’s how a majority of us like it.

This time, however, the politicians attempted to hijack the process. Anyone who wanted to vote in this year’s presidential primary not only had to declare a party. They had to do so with the expectation that their name and how they voted would be turned over to both major political parties, to use in whatever way they wished.

In other words, they could plaster on a billboard that “Mrs. Millicuddy voted in the Republican primary,” if they wanted to.

Right from the start, I thought that was outrageous. Now as you know, I don’t mind hanging my opinions out for everybody to see.

But not everyone is like that – nor should they be required to be. I personally know three people who didn’t vote in the primary because they didn’t want anyone to know what party they were voting for. I think that was one factor in why the turnout was so low.

What’s even more outrageous is why the parties did this. They wanted to get lists of people they could hit up for contributions.

When I found out that the law said the parties could have copies of these lists and nobody else could, I was first outraged.

But then I was reassured, because I knew that meant the law was almost certain to be declared unconstitutional. And it was.

So since collecting these lists was illegal, it stands to reason that they should not be public information. That means they should be destroyed, or at the very least, sealed until we are all dead, in case they prove of interest to future historians.

However, if it helps, I will offer a compromise.

You can have my voting record. You’ll find I voted in the Republican primary, and everyone is welcome to hit me with their best fund-raising junk mail anytime.

My garbage can, by the way, is very close to the street.

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Interview: Mark Grebner - 4/28/2008

The lists of who chose a Democratic or Republican ballot in the January 15th presidential primary were supposed to be turned over only to the state’s political parties. But a federal judge ruled that that law was unconstitutional. Now, political consultant Mark Grebner wants access to those lists… and has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for them. But, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land denied the request. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Mark Grebner.

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Essay: Democratic Dithering - 4/24/2008

I’ve known Joel Ferguson for years, and I can tell you he is a brilliant guy. He is a self-made multi-millionaire developer who put himself through college working on the line at Oldsmobile.

While he has held elected office, including several stints as a Michigan State University trustee, he has been more important as a major player behind the scenes. Old-timers still remember his brilliant coup in 1988, when he organized a stealth campaign to bus voters to that year’s mostly ignored Michigan Democratic caucuses.

The result was a stunning and totally unexpected victory for Jesse Jackson, humiliating the party leadership.

So when Ferguson talks, it is a good idea to listen. Though he is often working a number of angles, his argument about the superdelegates makes a lot of sense. They were supposed to be seated automatically, regardless of whether the party selected the rest of their delegates in a primary, a caucus, or a marzipan contest.

His argument about the elected delegates is a lot weaker, however, and he knows it. First of all, if Michigan’s elected delegates are seated, it will make a mockery of the whole rules process.

If they get away with having a primary three weeks before the rules said they could, what’s to prevent some other state from having its 2012 primary in December 2011? Or December 2009, for that matter?

But I am glad he has filed this challenge, because it illustrates what some of us have known all along. If both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are still standing when the primaries end in June, this will go to the Democratic National convention in Denver.

The convention will decide in the last week of August whether to seat Michigan and Florida, and their decision will determine the nominee. If they are seated, Clinton likely wins. If not, Obama does.

And taking it to Denver might not be a bad thing. Nothing wrong with a little democracy in action – as long as neither side feels robbed.

But what continues to amaze me is the absolute boneheaded stupidity of the Michigan Democratic Party. Last weekend, local democrats met in district conventions to pick some of the delegates elected in January, in case they ever get seated.

Based on the way the vote broke down, Clinton won 47, and the leadership let her camp pick all those folks.

The uncommitted slate won 36 delegates, and the Obama people logically thought they should get to name those, since he is the only remaining candidate left.

But the party bureaucrats only let them pick half of those, and shoved their own people into the remaining slots. They took the selection of another 45 delegates away from the people entirely.

They will be picked by the state central committee of party insiders. As the Free Press’s Brian Dickerson observed, what a wonderful way to alienate the new voters the Obama campaign has brought into the Democratic Party. That seems crazy, until you realize that for apparatchiks, the process isn’t really about winning. It is about control.

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Interview: Joel Ferguson - 4/24/2008

The Democratic National Committee is still refusing to seat Michigan’s democratic delegates. The committee says Michigan broke party rules when it moved the state’s primary to January 15th. Joel Ferguson thinks the committee’s decision is illegal and is challenging them with breaking their own rules. He’s a superdelegate and a member of the DNC. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Unemployment Benefits - 4/18/2008

For the last six weeks, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been desperately bashing each other over what seem to be progressively more silly non-issues. The latest of these features Clinton’s claim that Obama had somehow insulted working-class America, when he said it wasn’t surprising that they were getting “bitter” about the frustrating economic conditions.

The tempest that followed totally puzzled me. Virtually all the working-class and even middle-class people I know ARE somewhat bitter about the economy, even if they haven’t lost their job.

So what’s to like about $3.50 a gallon gas, and not being able to sell your house if your life depended on it?

But the Clintons and the media acted as if Obama had embraced al-Qaeda.

But the voters seem to have more sense than the pundits. Yesterday, a new Zogby poll in Pennsylvania showed that 60 percent of the voters agreed with Obama. They are bitter! Things aren’t good. And though Democrats have been slipping in the polls lately, in Pennsylvania, both contenders still lead John McCain.

And that may give you some insight into why normally party-line Republicans like Thaddeus McCotter have parted company with the Bush Administration on the unemployment bill.

Some of this happens in every administration. Presidents progressively lose power and influence, as the clock counts down in the last months of their final term. But this is a special case.

George W. Bush and his policies have been intensely unpopular for some time, and the country is now headed into a recession. This fact is going to be the single greatest economic hurdle John McCain has to overcome if he is going to be elected.

Six months from now, there are going to be two nominees, and if the race comes down to a referendum on the economy, the Democratic presidential nominee will win, whoever it is.

Michigan rejected President Bush four years ago, largely for economic reasons, and things were a lot better then. Thaddeus McCotter knows this, and he knows he is not invulnerable.

This fall, he has to run for a fourth term. He is the youngest and least-well-known Republican congressman in the state. He will be favored to win, but as the Almanac of American Politics notes, he could be vulnerable to a well-funded, top-tier Democratic opponent.

He was lucky two years ago; his opponent had almost no money, and unlike some other challengers. didn’t seem to work very hard. But McCotter got only 54 percent, his lowest showing ever.

That doesn’t mean that McCotter isn’t sincere about wanting to help unemployed workers. But as the entertaining and colorful Speaker of the House Tip O‘Neill used to say, all politics is local.

And this fall, smart local politics are going to mean opposing the Bush Administration’s economic policies. If the President vetoes extending unemployment compensation, you can bet you’ll see it on YouTube and TV commercials, right up till election day.

And the Democrats are counting on those images driving any memory of the Reverend Wright videos right off the charts.

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Interview: Thaddeus McCotter - 4/18/2008

A new bipartisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives would help people out of work. Thaddeus McCotter, a Congressman from Livonia, co-sponsored the bill. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with about how it would help Michigan.

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Essay: Democratic Crisis - 4/2/2008

I haven’t agreed with a lot that Bill Clinton has said during the current presidential campaign. But this weekend, he said something that made perfect sense. He was asked about the increasingly frantic cries for one of the remaining Democratic candidates to get out of the race.

“Relax,” the former President said. And he was exactly right. There is no reason that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama should feel pressured to end their campaigns, and no reason to think that their staying in it does anything to hurt the Democratic party.

Now it is true that the Democrats will be hurt, the more the candidates and their surrogates engage in nasty personal attacks on each other. Both sides, especially perhaps Senator Clinton’s forces, need to tone it down.

But the campaign itself has been a very good thing for the Democratic Party, sparking interest and turnout and swelling voter registration. For once, young people really are voting.

If the campaign ended now, one side would feel robbed. And that’s the worst possible thing that could happen, if the Democrats are to be united this fall. Most of the pressure to end this thing is really coming from the media, who seem to have an unhealthy need for instant gratification. Here’s the only real problem.

After two months of weekly elections, we haven’t had a primary or caucus since March 10.

The next contest, in Pennsylvania, doesn’t happen until April 22, and the media is freaking out. Well, we need to cool our jets.

Here’s a little bit of perspective. It has been less than three months since the Iowa caucuses. Three months ago, on New Year’s Day, most of the experts didn’t think John McCain, or certainly Barack Obama, had much of a chance. Now consider this.

The Democratic National Convention in Denver doesn’t even start for another four and a half months. And the election isn’t until two months after that. There is lots of time left.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy didn’t win their nominations until the conventions actually started, and they all won in November. Democrats are especially notorious for fighting hard and then making up.

But here’s what should really worry the Democrats, at least in Michigan. No Democratic presidential candidate can carry the state without a healthy turnout from Detroit. George Bush actually carried the rest of Michigan both times – till the counters got to the city line.

Any Democrat will get more than 90 percent of the city’s vote. But what is essential is turnout. And if the mayor is still fighting his felony charges, they’ll have massive problems.

National and state Democrats will treat the city as though it were radioactive. The presidential candidate, whomever it is, isn’t going to be seen with Mayor Text Message. And the mayor is likely to be too preoccupied to oversee an essential get out the vote operation.

Don’t think the Democrats don’t know this. Knowing what to do about it, however, is another thing.

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Interview: James Blanchard - 4/2/2008

The effort to re-do Michigan’s Democratic primary fell apart last month. And, as it stands now, the democratic delegates will not be seated at the party’s National Convention in August. However, Bart Stupak, a Congressman from the Upper Peninsula, has a new idea on how to seat the state’s delegates. It would be based partly on Michigan's January 15th primary results and partly on the popular vote in all of the nation's presidential primaries. James Blanchard is a former Governor of Michigan and Co-Chair of Hillary Clinton’s Michigan campaign. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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