Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Ain't Over Till It's Over - 10/31/2008

Last night I gave a lecture about the election and Michigan’s future at the public library in Novi. I wore a political button while I spoke, one my best friend gave me. But it doesn’t have anything to do with this year’s voting -- or maybe it does.

By today’s standards, it is a little odd. It shows a small face peeping out of a sunflower. The candidate was Alf Landon, governor of the Sunflower State of Kansas. He was a Republican, and at this point in the presidential campaign of 1936, was leading in the polls.

Leading by far more than Barack Obama is currently leading John McCain. On election day, Landon easily won Maine and Vermont. And that was all. He lost every other state in the union.

His defeat remains the biggest blowout in modern Electoral College history. Later, the pollsters of the day scratched their heads. How could they have been so wrong? The answer had to do with their methodology. They conducted their polls by using the telephone directory. Indeed, most people who had private telephones then did vote Republican. But this was during the Great Depression. The people who the pollsters couldn’t reach were overwhelmingly in favor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even in the Sunflower state.

I wore that button to remind the audience -- and myself -- that you never can tell. Indeed, one pollster told me he thought the polls could be wrong this year. And wrong, once again, because of people with telephones. Many of these surveys don’t include people who, like all the thirty-year-olds I know, only have cell phones.

Young voters with cell phones seem to be overwhelmingly for Obama. If they actually vote, this may be a very one-sided race indeed. However, there are many more races on the ballot than the presidential one. What mystifies me is how most voters make up their minds in some of these contests. How does your average person know which candidate for probate judge is best?

I can tell you how most voters will make up their mind in the race for justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where the EPIC-MRA polls shows a dead heat between Diane Hathaway and Cliff Taylor.

They will likely vote for Taylor, because it says right on the ballot that he is already a supreme court justice. That’s why incumbent judges almost never lose. After all, we’ve all grown up watching TV commercials, and the first thing a patriotic young kid learns is that you are never supposed to select Brand X.

But I can also tell you that on Tuesday night, somewhere, in some race, the pollsters will be proven dead wrong.

And whomever loses might think of this. Old Alf Landon didn’t get bitter when he lost. He went back to Kansas, lived a long and happy life and got to see his daughter elected to the United States Senate.

When he died, he was a hundred years old. In the end, the final victory may be all about living well.

Views expressed in the essay by Jack Lessenberry are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

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Interview: Bernie Porn - 10/31/2008

Yesterday, the Lansing polling firm EPIC M-R-A released its latest state polling data. And, some of the numbers may be surprising… Bernie Porn is President of EPIC M-R-A. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about where many of the races stand.

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Essay: A GM-Chrysler Merger? - 10/30/2008

I am not an ornithologist, but I do know there is a price to be paid for being an ostrich. Sooner or later, you have to take your head out of the sand, and what you may see may not be pretty.

For proof, let me read you some excerpts from the Anderson Economic Group’s analysis of the proposed merger between General Motors and Chrysler.

By the way, calling this a merger is to distort the language. We’re talking about a case where GM buys the carcass, absorbs the remaining healthy meat, and throws the bones away.

Anyway, this is from the executive summary of the report: “The world has had excess capacity for automobile production for most of the past two decades, and the U.S. market had attracted many more brands, models and suppliers than the U.S. consumer could support.

“The U.S. consumer has been a beneficiary of intense competition, improved product quality, and much lower prices. But that era is coming to an end. The remaining automakers will not be able to subsidize the sales of their vehicles as GM, Ford and Chrysler have done with many of their models in recent years.”

From there, the news just gets worse and worse. “Every state in the union would see reductions in jobs due to such a merger. Michigan would be, by far, the worst affected by losses in managerial, design, and technical employment.

And the report goes on to indicate that there is no reason to believe that the merger will necessarily save General Motors. I quote, “A GM-Chrysler merger could have been a marginal success under the economics of the industry ten years ago.“

“However, given the serious erosion in market share for both entities since then, the even more dramatic drop in market value of the two companies, and the slowdown in the U.S. market, the same economics no longer hold.” So long-term, all bets are off.

But nevertheless, the Anderson study thinks the federal government has to get involved and help make this a reality.

Why? Because they, quote, “believe the possibility of the bankruptcy of one of these entities, with the ensuing collapse of many suppliers and closure of hundreds of dealers around the country would cost the U.S. government much more than the plausible terms of financing assistance that have been discussed.”

Think about that. Patrick Anderson, by the way, is no wild-eyed radical; he was a budget cruncher in the Engler Administration.

Nor is he faint of heart. He was in the World Trade Center on September 11, and survived. But if you ever saw the original Star Trek TV series, this is one of those points where Dr. McCoy turns to Captain Kirk and says “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”

Regardless of whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins next week, this state is going to have to get used to life that is not as we have known it.

We literally have to reinvent the wheel, in more ways than one. And the sooner we face that, the better.

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Interview: Patrick Anderson - 10/30/2008

A proposed takeover of Chrysler by General Motors may be closer to reality today. Sources say the two automakers have resolved the major issues necessary to create a deal. But how would such a deal affect Michigan jobs? Yesterday, the Anderson Economic Group released a detailed analysis of what a merger would mean for the state. Patrick Anderson is the group’s CEO. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Third Parties - 10/29/2008

What do Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, and Cynthia McKinney have in common? Apart, that is, from the fact that you probably have never heard of two or more of them.

They are all presidential candidates who have managed to qualify for the ballot in Michigan. They represent the U.S. Taxpayers Party, the Libertarian Party, the Natural Law Party and the Greens.

They all have something in common. They are all going to lose, and lose very badly, if the polls and historical trends are accurate. Thanks to the excitement over the major party candidates this year, I would be surprised if any of them got even one percent of the vote.

Their ideologies are very different. Chuck Baldwin thinks John McCain is too far left, and Cynthia McKinney thinks Barack Obama is too far to the right. However, the third parties do agree they are not getting a fair shake from the system.

I know this in part because my excellent assistant, Colleen Castle, discovered something called the Michigan Third Parties Coalition Website, where all these parties are attempting to make common cause in the interest of fairness.

Here’s an excerpt from their manifesto, all of it true:

Under the present Michigan election law, it is impossible for a new party to nominate any candidates for the ballot without spending tens of thousands of dollars on a statewide ballot access drive – an often impossible task for third parties (without) corporate financial backing … Minor parties that have been able to qualify for ballot access in Michigan are threatened each election with the possibility of losing (it). At the same time, the plurality voting system used in all Michigan elections leads voters to feel compelled to vote for one of the major party candidates … or else “waste” their vote.

What third parties would really like is something called “IRV,” for Instant Runoff Voting. That’s a system under which you would cast two votes, for your first and second choices.

If your first choice finishes out of the money, your vote would go to your second choice. Had this option been available nationally in 2000, two things would have happened.

Ralph Nader would have gotten more first-round votes than the two and half percent he in fact achieved, and the presidential election would have been won by Al Gore.

Naturally, Republicans wouldn’t have liked that idea at all -- any more than Democrats would have in 1992, when it might have reelected George Bush the First. Someday, I think it is conceivable that a third-party candidate could be elected president.

Theodore Roosevelt made a good run at it in 1912, finishing a strong second and carrying Michigan, among other states. But if a third-party candidate ever does win, he or she will almost certainly have to make common cause with one of the major parties.

Otherwise, they would never get anything through Congress. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, our two-party system of democracy is the worst there is. Except, that is, for all the others that have been tried.

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Interview: Gleaves Whitney - 10/29/2008

You might not know it but, there are four candidates for President on the Michigan ballot other than John McCain and Barack Obama. Third party candidates are always with us but seldom get a lot of attention. Gleaves Whitney is Director of Grand Valley State University’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: The Coming Storm - 10/28/2008

Those who know the auto industry have known for a long time that Chrysler was unlikely to survive, at least as a stand-alone company. For the past several weeks I have read and listened to the speculation about a possible merger with a sense of dread.

In fact, I felt sort of like the Confederate General James Longstreet at the Battle of Gettysburg. What on earth am I talking about? Simply this: Pickett’s charge, the most famous single military action of the entire Civil War. Everybody was enthralled and fascinated by the spectacle of thousands of men, waving bright battle flags, marching bravely across an open field.

Longstreet, however, knew what would happen to them when the Yankee cannon started firing: They were cut to pieces. Thousands died, and the suffering that followed was monumental. Well, a version of that is going to happen with Chrysler, regardless of how this all plays out. Auto buffs and industry insiders may be geeked to learn whether General Motors absorbs Chrysler, or whether Chrysler instead forms an alliance with Renault/Nissan.

That is interesting, to a degree. But what I can’t get out of my mind is that even under the best-case scenario, tens of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs, most of them in Michigan.

Sean McAlinden, who knows the economics of the auto business better than just about anyone, thinks that if GM does swallow Chrysler, more than sixty percent of Chrysler’s 49,000 remaining workers in this country would lose their jobs.

That’s more than thirty thousand lost jobs, not counting all the ripple effects and other dislocations that would follow. Michigan, as always, would suffer most heavily.

The human toll will be even more staggering. Think of the thousands of assembly line workers in their 40s and 50s who have been being well-paid and living a middle class lifestyle.

Now, in a twinkling, many of them will see their livelihoods vanish forever. Some of them may never work again.

Most, who have no more than a high school education, will have an extremely hard time finding any job that pays anything like what they are used to making. That won’t just affect them.

They have wives and husbands and kids either in college or who have been planning to go. What happens to them?

And it’s not just Chrysler. The other day, a top-ranking automotive journalist told me there is no certain future for any of these companies. General Motors is spending money at a rate that would drive it into bankruptcy by next spring. He thought Ford, which has a somewhat better cash position, might last till the end of 2009.

Perhaps the loan guarantees will help. Perhaps these estimates are too gloomy. Maybe more of our domestic auto universe will survive than now looks probable. But beyond any doubt, much of it won’t. What I worry about most is that we may soon have a special name for the way Michigan economy is today.

I fear we may call this, “the good times."

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Interview: Sean McAlinden - 10/28/2008

Should the U.S. Government help General Motors buy Chrysler? That may sound incredible, but the White House has confirmed that talks are under way. Sean McAlinden is chief economist with the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about what a possible merger would mean.

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Interview: Jack Hoogendyk - 10/27/2008

For the past few weeks Michigan Radio’s Senior Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been speaking with candidates running for office this November. Today, Jack speaks with Republican State Representative Jack Hoogendyk. He is running against Democratic incumbent Carl Levin in Michigan’s U.S. senatorial race. We had hoped to speak with both candidates however, Senator Levin’s campaign declined to find time for an interview on this program.

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Essay: Offering a Choice - 10/27/2008

There are a lot of issues on which Jack Hoogendyk and I disagree, but I have a lot of admiration for him, and here’s why. He had the guts, the party loyalty and the patriotism to make this race when nobody else would. He is carrying the flag for the Republican party and getting, so far as I can see, virtually no help in return.

They aren’t giving him any money, and are doing precious little to help get his message out. And that’s a disservice to democracy.

In fact, his Democratic opponent, U.S. Senator Carl Levin, has done more to help Hoogendyk than the Republicans. He consented to two debates with his challenger. Now, he could have ducked out of those. A lot of incumbents would have. But he didn’t.

Let’s assume for a moment that Carl Levin is a great senator, represents Michigan and the nation well, and deserves another term.

Even if you believe that, the voters are owed a race.

Democracy, as I understand it, means that each party should nominate a credible and competent challenger capable of providing a vigorous debate on the issues, and a political alternative.

Nobody is perfect. Carl Levin is two years older than John McCain. There are those who say he’s been there too long, and has forgotten where he came from.

Whether that is valid or not, the voters deserve to hear him have to defend his record. But he really hasn’t had to.

Frankly, the Republicans probably owed it to us voters to nominate a candidate with more seasoning and background.

That’s not to insult Hoogendyk, but his only experience is as a salesman, and six years in the state house of representatives. Carl Levin is a Harvard Law grad who headed the Detroit City Council, and has been in Washington for thirty years. By rights, the GOP ought to have nominated someone with more experience.

Someone like Congressmen Mike Rogers, Dave Camp, Candice Miller, Fred Upton, Thaddeus McCotter or Pete Hoekstra. But there is no way any of them could have been persuaded to challenge Carl Levin. Why?

Because everyone believes Levin is invulnerable. He has been around so long and is so highly respected that there is no way anyone could ever defeat him. To run against him, the congressmen I mentioned would have to give up a safe seat.

So they didn’t. What’s worse is that nobody is doing anything to help Hoogendyk even make a respectable effort. Two years ago, Republicans recruited Mike Bouchard, the Oakland County sheriff, to take on Debbie Stabenow. They helped him raise more than six million dollars. He still got creamed.

This year, poor Hoogendyk has raised less than three hundred thousand dollars. Levin has millions. The outcome is seen as a foregone conclusion. And on most issues I probably agree more with Carl Levin. But I’ve got to hand it to you, Jack.

You’ve earned my respect, and when I get in the booth, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

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