Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Leadership Crisis - 9/30/2008

Do you know what the difference is between the stock market crash of 1929 and what’s happening in the country now?

For one thing, Black Tuesday did not come during a presidential election year. We are looking at a disaster that is being magnified by a rare and unhappy confluence of events.

There are a number of things going on here that seem designed to work against any kind of rational behavior. Having a crisis of this magnitude a month before a hotly contested national election would seem an automatic invitation to disaster.

But there are a lot of other ingredients. First of all, almost no one seems to have seen the economic crisis coming.

That may be due in part to a failure of my profession, journalism. Those who are running our major news institutions evidently want you to believe that Matt Damon and Jennifer Aniston and J Lo are the most important people in the world.

They want you to think about their frivolous and inconsequential lives. Trying to make serious sense of our nation’s finances is hard and takes a lot of work. Washington likes to criticize the domestic automakers these days for being so short-sighted, for caring more about the next set of ten-days sales reports than about building the cars needed to stay competitive ten years from now. That’s fair.

Yet the fact is that we’ve been running our economy the same way. Asking the voters to tighten their belts, turn down that dial and invest for the long-term future was politically risky at best.

Borrowing a few trillion more from China to keep the good times rolling was a lot easier. Besides, by the time the bill comes due, the politicians who borrowed the money are likely to be retired.

Well, we’re close to maxing out all our credit cards. The bills are coming due, the banks are tottering, and nobody is exactly sure what to do about it. Suddenly, Congress was told that either they put up immense sums to bail out these imprudent lenders, or the whole financial structure could come crashing down.

That didn’t make much sense to most congressmen, who frankly resented it. Rank-and-file Republicans didn’t see why their constituents should have to bail out the Wall Street plutocrats.

Both Democrats and Republicans smelled an election-year rat and didn’t want to be left holding the bag with the ticking time bomb. So, yesterday, they revolted against the leadership of both parties.

To everyone’s shock, they told those who had built the life raft to shove it. That must have felt good, until the largest one-day stock slide in history. We don’t know what happens next.

We do know that Republicans are ignoring the man they once followed blindly, George W. Bush and his would-be successor, John McCain. Barack Obama seems mysteriously silent.

Oregon’s only Republican congressman, a former broadcaster named Greg Walden, may have put it best.

“We are playing with fire. It’s very, very dangerous,” he said.

We are likely to find out how much so, very soon.

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Interview: Mike Rogers - 9/30/3008

The financial community was taken by surprise yesterday when the House of Representatives rejected the Wall Street bailout bill. Which, in turn, resulted in the biggest stock market slide in history. Mike Rogers is a Republican Congressman from Brighton. He voted against the bail-out measure. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about what happens next.

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Essay: Catholic Voters - 9/29/2008

When I was in college, political science teachers pointed with pride to the election of John F. Kennedy. Not because of his politics. But because his election signaled that Americans were no longer too prejudiced to elect a Roman Catholic to the highest office in the land.

Hard to believe now, but there actually were people in this country who believed that no Roman Catholic could be a loyal American, that deep down, they would always owe their allegiance to a foreign power - the Pope - and a foreign capital - Vatican City.

Those ideas had prevented any Catholic from becoming president before 1960. Whatever else one thought of his performance in office, nobody ever accused President Kennedy of being some kind of puppet for the pope. Those fears vanished, seemingly overnight. Yet here is an interesting puzzle.

In two years, it will have been half a century since Kennedy was elected. So - how many Catholics have sat in the Oval Office since then? Well, zero. We haven’t elected a Catholic since.

And we won’t this year, since both major party candidates are Protestants. Is it just a coincidence that we haven’t elected another Catholic to the nation’s highest office? I don’t think so…

The problem can be summed up in three words: Roe vs. Wade. The U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing abortion as a Constitutional right. This was a decision that divided Catholics like no other in history. The church is also opposed to birth control.

However, that is a doctrine that American Catholics have chosen to overwhelmingly ignore, and the church, for the most part, has mostly looked the other way.

But abortion, especially abortion-on-demand, was something else again. This was not something the church felt it could compromise over. Suddenly, Catholic politicians were caught in the cross hairs of modern society’s ultimate conflict.

The problem was worse for them because the majority of the most powerful and prominent Roman Catholics in government are liberal Democrats. Think Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi.

They are personally pro-choice. That doesn’t present much of a problem for them in their current jobs. They can all continue to be easily re-elected as long as they have a pulse.

The problems arise when they try to operate on a national stage. Nobody who doesn’t support a woman’s right to choose can ever hope to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yet anyone who does will be regarded as baby-killers by a large and vocal faction of their church, who will try to sink their candidacy. Nobody imagined this in 1960, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy took nearly eighty percent of the Catholic vote.

But this led to John Forbes Kerry losing fifty-two percent of Catholic voters to a Methodist named George W. Bush.

That’s a dilemma that will continue as long as millions of voters continue to cast their ballots on the basis of a single issue.

You know, last time I checked, there were ten commandments. I can’t quite get those who wants to reduce all morality to only one,

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Interview: Chris Korzen - 9/29/2008

Roman Catholic voters used to be a reliable Democratic voting block. But since Roe v. Wade they tend to be deeply divided. Chris Korzen wants to do something about the divisions in his church and nation. He is the author of the new book, A Nation For All, How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America From the Politics of Division. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Debatable - 9/26/2008

So tonight, or at least sometime soon, we will finally see John McCain and Barack Obama on the same stage, answering questions, each trying to persuade us that he should be our next President. I have no idea who will most impress us.

But I can make some informed guesses. First of all, if you sit down firmly convinced that Obama is the better man, you will still think that at the end of the night. Ditto if you are a McCain supporter. Unless your candidate flings off his clothes and runs screaming down the aisles, you will conclude that he won.

Second, if you are really on the fence, it may be a while before you know who you think won the debate. That's because you will mingle your own impressions with reactions filtered through the media. And finally, how it comes out will have almost nothing to do with what positions the candidates take. Neither is going to come out in favor of abolishing all taxes, or nationalizing your toothbrush.

Odds are you won't remember what they said.

These debates are really about comfort levels. Not to insult any third party candidates, but one of these two men is going to be the next President. Someone with the power to destroy the world, and the world economy, and hopefully also the potential to save it.

Each of these two men has a different problem. Barack Obama's is simple. He is a man of color in a majority white society, with issues of race never far from the surface. Everybody knows he is young, inspiring and energetic.

But can he make us feel comfortable enough?

John McCain is an authentic war hero. But there are questions about his age and health. The nation may be excited about his running mate, but few think she is ready to be president. There are also questions about how connected he is to average people. When the Wall Street crisis began, he seemed out to lunch. It didn't help that we had just learned that he owns thirteen cars.

The worst thing that could happen to Obama in these debates is to come across as an intellectual elitist who you couldn't imagine at a barbecue. The worst thing for McCain would be the impression that he is a cranky old man who doesn't understand the economy, and who is itching to send American boys into more wars.

Most of the time, these debates haven't decided elections. I can think of one major exception. In 1980, the nation was thoroughly tired of Jimmy Carter. But they weren't really comfortable yet with Ronald Reagan. But with a series of one-liners, Reagan made the nation feel at ease, and went on to win 44 states.

Today, we are uneasy about our future, and we are going to hire one of these two guys to run the most important ship in the world, at a time when it seems to have sprung a few leaks.

Whatever happens, there is just one thing I can't imagine:

Not tuning in.

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Interview: Jack Kay - 9/26/2008

The much-awaited first presidential debate begins tonight at the University of Mississippi. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain are supposed to square off over foreign policy but it’s most likely that the conversation will turn to the economic crisis at home. Jack Kay is a longtime debate coach. He is also provost at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about how the candidates prepared and what we should be watching for.

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Essay: Sticking to the Union - 9/25/2008

I talked to a top-ranking Republican pollster a few weeks ago. He is a partisan, but a realistic one. I asked what John McCain‘s chances would have been if the Democrats had nominated an attractive white male candidate, sort of an untainted John Edwards.

“Very low,“ he said. “But they wouldn’t have had to nominate a man. They could have won with Hillary Clinton.” The pollster knows times aren't good and his party is deeply unpopular. Nevertheless, he thought McCain would win.

The reason? Because Barack Obama happens to be black. And that, he thinks, won’t fly with white, blue-collar, union workers.

“One guy told me straight out that he isn’t going to vote for an African-American,“ he said. By the way, neither the pollster nor the worker used the term African-American.

He said a lot of other blue-collar workers are more subtle about it; they say they don’t have any problems with Obama, or that their opposition to him is based on some policy difference.

But then they volunteer that they have plenty of friends who will never vote to put a black man in the White House.

Well, there clearly are people like that, though you could probably spend your whole life in Ann Arbor and not meet any.

However, I question whether those voters would be willing to vote for any Democrat these days. Four years ago, they were sneering at John Kerry because he was “too liberal” and “looked French.” And even my pollster friend said the one thing that could trump race in this election was the economy. I last talked to him before the Wall Street meltdown. And indeed, the polls seem to have swung towards Obama, both nationally and in Michigan, since the depths of the economic crisis began to sink in.

The one thing that surprises me a bit is that labor leaders haven’t been pointing out to the rank-and-file that the next president is likely to replace three Supreme Court justices in his first term.

Make that, three of the most liberal Supreme Court justices. So, who does labor want appointing the justices that will be ruling on, for example, proposed right-to-work legislation?

Who do they want interpreting the Constitution when it comes to issues surrounding their collective bargaining rights?

My guess is that the vast majority of labor will come home to Obama in the end. But the bigger issue is whether the labor movement will continue to be relevant in any major way.

Fewer than twenty percent of those working in Michigan today are union members. Worse, that membership is concentrated in public sector jobs, where there is no right to strike,

Less than eight percent of all private sector jobs are now unionized, and the number drops further every year. Mark Gaffney may be able to get his members out to vote. But labor leaders are doing far less well at getting them to join his unions.

And that’s a problem none of them seems to know how to solve.

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Interview: Mark Gaffney - 9/25/2008

Any Democrat who wants to win the White House needs a strong and enthusiastic labor turnout in Michigan. This year, union leaders are determined to deliver those votes to Senator Barack Obama. However, the percentage of workers represented by unions is diminishing. Mark Gaffney is state President of the AFL-CIO. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Interview: Tom Watkins - 9/24/2008

Today is what’s known as Count Day in public schools all over Michigan. And, it’s an especially important day for Detroit. For the first time in nearly a century, the number of public school students in the city is likely to drop below one hundred thousand. If that happens, it will mean that Detroit will no longer legally be a First Class school district under Michigan law. And, that could mean some changes for the Detroit Public School system. Tom Watkins is former state superintendent of schools. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about the importance of getting children to school today.

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Essay: Count Day - 9/24/2008

Don’t know about you, but it strikes me that there is something sad, indeed almost pathetic, about school districts offering the possibility of a new car as an incentive to get kids to show up.

That’s what’s going on, not in beleaguered Detroit, but in thoroughly suburban Westland, where you could win a lease on a Saturn Vue if you drag little Susie to class today. All Detroit is doing to try to get kids to show up is offering presents, pizza and ice cream.

All these schools are doing this, of course, because they gain nearly ten thousand state and federal dollars for every student they have on their books, and lose that much money each time they lose one, thanks to Proposal A.

Frankly, I am surprised there haven’t been scandals with schools signing up phantom students, bribing kids to show up at the wrong school, or smuggling illegal immigrants across the border to plump up the enrollment for count day.

This is not the way to educate the next generation. But you can’t blame the administrators; they have no choice. They are charged with providing an impossible array of services with what for most of them is an ever-shrinking pool of funds.

Not only is that unfair to them, it threatens to permanently cripple our state’s future. It also sabotages what the citizens were trying to accomplish when they passed Proposal A back in 1994.

Proposal A changed the way public education was funded in Michigan precisely because the old method of funding was unfair. It was based almost entirely on property tax-based millage. That meant you got a great education in Grosse Pointe.

But if you went to school in a poor area like Kalkaska, your district could run out money and have to close down, sometimes as early as February. By funding each student Proposal A was intended to make sure everybody got an equal chance at a good education.

That system helped poorer districts a great deal. But then came the rise of charter schools. If you put your child in a religious parochial school, they don’t get the state money – no one does.

But charter schools do qualify for public funding, and are gradually draining away resources from conventional public schools.

You can’t blame parents for taking their kids out of public schools if they think they can get a better education elsewhere.

What is less clear is whether this is, in fact the case – or whether the average parent has enough information to really evaluate which charter school may be best for their children.

I worry that in some areas, resources may be so split between charter schools and conventional schools that neither will be able to do an adequate job. Former state superintendent Tom Watkins gets it right. This needs to be all about providing our children, all of our children with the best education possible. Because in the long run, that should be worth far more to all of us than even a lease on a brand new Rolls Royce.

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