Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: The UAW and the Transplants - 1.14.11

United Auto Workers’ President Bob King is gearing up for another attempt to organize Japanese transplant factories. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks it could be the union’s last stand.

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History and literature are full of stories of gallant last stands. Stories in which the remnants of a once-mighty army sally forth against a far more powerful foe. Most of the time, they realize they have no chance. In some cases, they hope for a miracle.

Or at least they hope that their epic final charge inspires future generations. Maybe even, becomes the stuff of legends.

I was reminded of all that this week, when I learned that the United Auto Workers union has set aside sixty million dollars in an effort to organize transplant factories. Those are auto plants here in the United States that are owned by foreign automakers, like Toyota.

Many are in the South. None are in Michigan. And the UAW has utterly failed to organize any of the transplant factories, except for a few joint ventures with Detroit automakers.

This is not an accident.

Foreign automakers have deliberately located their plants as far from UAW-influenced areas as possible, and spent heavily in a successful effort to discourage workers from turning to the union.

Meanwhile, during the last two decades, the number of transplant factory workers has steadily increased, while the number of workers represented by the UAW has nosedived.

Thirty years ago, the union Walter Reuther built had more than a million and a half members. The most recent statistics show that has fallen to barely 350,000, many of whom aren‘t auto workers.

Mark Gaffney, head of the AFL-CIO in Michigan, once told me that unless something changed, that by 2012, there would be more U.S. auto workers not represented by the UAW than were represented by the union. If that happened, he hinted, the union would be doomed. Now, new UAW leader Bob King has vowed to do something about it. He isn’t, however, pounding his fist on the table like a 1940s labor leader, vowing to succeed or die trying.

Instead, King told the Automotive News World Congress the other day that he intended to fight for fair union elections in the transplants. “We just have to convince them we’re not the evil empire that they think,” he said. Twenty years ago, when asked about the union, Japanese auto makers generally made polite noises, and at least tried to sound reasonable. Today, they feel less need to do so. When told of King’s remarks, one spokesman sniffed, “Honda has had no dialogue with the UAW, and has no interest in a discussion with them.”

But the UAW needs to try to start that discussion and score some victories. Some think they may be able to succeed with Mercedes Benz before the Japanese and Koreans. For now, all King is saying is that the UAW wants a fair shake.

Last summer, I met a retired Ford manager who told me that years ago, King, who already had a law degree, went to work for him in a plant. Why are you doing this?” the older man asked.

“Because I intend to be the next Walter Reuther someday,” King supposedly told him. One thing‘s for sure. If Bob King can find a way to organize America‘s transplant factories, he’ll give his union a new lease on life. And that would make Walter Reuther very glad.

Essay: Waiting For the Governor - 1.13.11

The new legislature met for the first time yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says the next step will be a signal from the governor.

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The new legislature convened for the first time yesterday, nearly two weeks after their terms began. They posed for pictures and elected officers. They officially announced who would have what positions on which committees.

These are all things that had been worked out days or weeks before. What then followed was sort of the equivalent of lining up their pencils and making sure they are sharpened.

To a great extent, they are waiting for the governor. That is to say, they are waiting for Rick Snyder to set forth his program and put forward his proposals for balancing the state budget.

That doesn’t mean the lawmakers will necessarily agree with him, even his fellow Republicans. e hungry for leadership.

There hasn’t really been any in a long time, just quarreling factions. Now, it is up to the Republicans to try to fix the mess that Michigan is in, both in terms of the state budget and the economy of the state as a whole. That’s because they control all three branches of government for the first time since the nineties.

None of this will be easy.

Officially, job one is going to be balancing a state budget which now has an estimated deficit of $1.8 billion dollars, mostly in the $7 billion or so general fund. That‘s a tremendous gap to close.

Actually, if recent history is any clue, the real deficit will probably end up being even larger than that, maybe, two billion.

Anyone who tells you this can largely be made up by cracking down on frivolous expenditures, or eliminating waste, fraud and abuse doesn’t know what they are talking about.

The easy cuts were made long ago. Now for the hard and painful part. What’s encouraging is that our new governor seems to be treating the other players as intelligent partners.

Yesterday, he met with the presidents of Michigan’s fifteen public universities, and took along John Nixon, the new budget director he hired from Utah. Afterwards, some of those present indicated the governor had indicated tough times lay ahead. It is hard to see how the budget can be balanced without cutting university appropriations. Unfortunately, it is also hard to see how this state can ever experience an economic revival unless we spend more on higher and advanced education of all kinds. The governor did do something that pleased the college presidents. He indicated he would consult them on who to appoint to their governing boards. The trustees of MSU, the U of M and Wayne State are elected by the people, but everywhere else -- at Western Michigan, say, they are run by a board appointed by the governor. Jennifer Granholm, so far as anyone knows, never consulted the presidents before appointing board members.

Within a very few days, the governor will start signaling his direction. He needs to do that soon, or restless lawmakers may start off on tangents of their own. The state has been drifting for a decade, and everyone has been waiting for leadership and vision.

Last November, we elected a new leader. Hopefully when he makes his first State of the State speech Wednesday, we should get at least some very strong clues about where he proposes to take us, and how he plans to get us there.

Essay: The Governor and the Auto Show - 1.12.11

Governor Rick Snyder visited the auto show yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks his visit may provide some clues as to how he might govern.

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Governor Rick Snyder visited the Detroit auto show yesterday, something governors traditionally do. They greet the CEOs, make nice comments about the new models, and disappear.

I can’t recall a single thing any politician has said at the auto show that was worth remembering. But this year is a little different. Two years ago, it was highly uncertain whether there would be either an domestic auto industry or an auto show in 2011.

What’s more, almost nobody in the industry or the state had ever heard of Rick Snyder, and nobody imagined he’d be governor.

Well, the auto industry is a good bit healthier today, and the state is getting used to a governor who doesn’t like to wear a tie, and doesn’t mind being called a nerd. Like other governors before him, Snyder didn’t say anything especially stirring at the auto show. But he did a few things worth noting. He didn’t just visit what we might now call the not-so-big three, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. He stopped by Kia and Hyundai and Toyota too.

The governor seems to have spent a fair amount of time with Sergio Marchionne, who is head of Chrysler, but also runs what is now its parent company, the Italian automaker Fiat.

And perhaps most remarkably, Snyder met with a number of alternative and renewable energy companies at a private reception yesterday before giving his formal remarks at the auto show.

His message seemed to be this: His administration is all about bringing the jobs of the future to Michigan, wherever they are to be found and whatever it takes to create them here. To quote our new governor, “It is companies, it is innovators, it is entrepreneurs who are going to create a better future for Michigan.”

As he sees it, his job is to make sure they find a fertile seed bed. Or as he put it, “We are committed to creating the very best environment in the world to create that formula for success.”

Next week, when he makes his state of the state speech, and next month, when he unveils his first budget, we’ll get a better idea how he intends to make that come about. My guess is that his approach will completely please neither Republicans nor Democrats. Governor Snyder wants to lessen the tax burden on business, and do so without raising taxes. That’s going to mean massive sacrifices across the board, unless someone repeals the laws of mathematics. Yet Rick Snyder also has signaled a commitment to common sense over ideology.

And that may force some revenue increases out of sheer necessity. The governor knows that nobody is about to bring new high-tech industry to a state where the infrastructure is falling apart and where the public schools have failed. He owes his success in part to the three degrees he’s earned from the University of Michigan, and I assume he values public higher education as well.

Yesterday, the governor praised the spirit that brought the auto industry back from its near-death experience.

He’s clearly hoping to do the same as well, with the business he’s running these days, an outfit called the state of Michigan.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Essay: Rule of Law - 1.11.11

This is supposed to be a society where everybody lives under the rule of law. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says that three people got that message yesterday, the hard way.

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It’s sometimes easy to be cynical about what we used to call “the system” back in the days when bell-bottom jeans were common.

Too often, it appears that society at all levels still functions under the golden rule, as in, he who has the gold, makes the rules.

Ideally, things are supposed to work according to the words engraved on the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington: Equal Justice Under Law.” But in practice, it too often seems that things are more like the famous New Yorker cartoon in which a judge peers down at a defendant, and asks:

“So, how much justice can you afford?“

However, three things happened yesterday that may restore a little faith in the rule of law. One was national; former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a man who once took the word “arrogant,” to new heights, was sentenced to three years in prison.

But the other two took place in Michigan. As mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick too often acted as if the laws didn’t apply to him. He kept on behaving that way, even after he was convicted of two felonies.

He’s in prison now, but yesterday, he, his father and three cohorts were back in town again, in federal court this time, pleading not guilty to charges from bribery to extortion to tax evasion.

What was interesting this time, however, was that the media and public scarcely paid attention. Once, we clamored for every detail about the self-styled hip-hop mayor’s outrageous lifestyle.

Yesterday, however, there was far less interest than before. Ten years after he burst on the scene as one of the nation’s youngest mayors, the convict Kilpatrick’s appearances in court have become so commonplace they’ve lost all power to shock.

Three years ago a top political consultant told me that no matter what, Kwame would always manage to get away with it.

Nobody’s saying that any more. The third thing affirming the rule of law also happened in a Detroit courtroom yesterday.

This time, it was in state court. The Detroit International Bridge Company has long behaved as though it were a law unto itself as well. The company, owned by billionaire trucking magnate Matty Moroun, has declared that it intends to build a second bridge next to the Ambassador Bridge, which it owns.

The government of Canada has said, no way. Various governments in the United States have refused permission as well, but the bridge company paid no attention.

It seized portions of a city park, and constructed illegal toll booths, fuel pumps and other structures. For a year, courts have been ordering the company to remove these, and to live up to its contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

They steadily refused to do so. But yesterday, Dan Stamper, president of the bridge company, got a nasty shock. Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards threw him in jail and fined him for contempt for refusing to obey a court order.

Later in the day, Stamper was released, and again ordered to comply. What happens next is unclear. But he was put on notice.

For democracy to really work, nobody can be above the law.

Yesterday, three men who sometimes acted as though the laws didn’t apply to them, got that message, the hard way.

Essay: After the Assassination - 1.10.11

People all over the nation are talking about the tragic shooting in Arizona. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks we need to reexamine our policies here.

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Last March I had an interview with Carl Levin, who as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is one of the more powerful men in Washington. He met me for breakfast one morning at an pancake house on the east side of Detroit.

He showed up alone, drove himself, and didn’t have any security with him. A couple folks glanced over, but nobody bothered us, and when he left, the cashier told him to keep up the good work.

Later that spring, I ran into my local grocery store late one night just before it closed. I immediately bumped into Carl’s brother Sandy, then the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He looked troubled. “They moved the bread,” he said.

“I know. I had the same problem last week. Let me show you where it is,” I said. He was by himself; I was by myself. He bought bread, I bought milk, and we got in our cars and went home.

There was something very nicely non-imperial about both those encounters. But I worry that this kind of interaction may now be threatened, thanks to last week’s horror at a shopping mall in Arizona. There’s talk about enhanced security for all members of Congress. I don’t know how we could afford that.

There are five hundred and thirty-five of them. Most have to run for office every two years. They need to be out among the people, talking to them, hearing their concerns.

We have a problem with people feeling alienated from their government. That’s going to get even worse if every congressman is surrounded by men with sunglasses and bulges under their suits.

We do need two things. First, to pressure our politicians to tone down their rhetoric, and stop using violent images to demonize their opponents. In the most recent election, Gabrielle Gifford’s opponent appeared to hint that maybe she should be taken out of office with an M-16 rifle. That’s obscene, as was a flyer showing her district targeted through a gunsight. Yes, most of us know they are metaphors. But there are thousands whose knowledge base is weak and whose grip on reality is none too strong.

And we need sensible policies on guns. Let me read you a quote from the majority opinion in perhaps the most pro-gun ruling ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2008 decision that held that individuals cannot be denied the right to own and keep fire arms.

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications” on their sale. The author was Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps our most pro-gun justice.

The shooter in the Arizona case was so mentally troubled he was no longer allowed to attend community college. Yet he could, and did, legally buy one of the most lethal weapons made.

That’s something the people of Arizona should change. Making sure Michigan’s policies are sensible is something we need to do. Apart from everything else, a similar tragedy in this state would be the last thing our troubled economy, and democracy, need.

Essay: The Importance of Being Kelly - 1.7.11

Michigan now has two state Supreme Court Justices with the name Kelly, and there is a chance there may soon be a third. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the Kelly escalation.

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On election day last year, I talked to a senior citizen who is a proud, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. I wondered how she had voted for state supreme court. “For the Democrats, of course,” she said.

“I voted for Kelly and Davis,” she said, meaning newly appointed justice Alton Davis. You voted for a Republican, I said.

Alton Davis is indeed a Democrat, but Mary Beth Kelly is a Republican. “No, I didn’t,” the lady said. “I voted for Marilyn Kelly, the chief justice. You wrote about her in a magazine article I read.

“She is a Democrat. You said so.“

Yes, she is, I said. But you voted for MARY BETH Kelly. She is a Republican. Her party nominated her partly because she is named Kelly, and they were hoping a lot of people might do what you did.

Well, guess what. I don’t know how many other people were confused, but Mary Beth Kelly won by a landslide, beating poor Alton Davis, who gave up a secure judgeship for less than six months on the state’s highest court.

Mary Beth Kelly then voted with her fellow Republicans to oust Marilyn Kelly as chief justice and replace her with a Republican named Robert Young. So much for any notion of pan-Kelly solidarity.

But things may be about to get even more complicated. Another Republican Supreme Court justice, Maura Corrigan, is voluntarily leaving the court to become head of Michigan’s Department of Human Services. That means Governor Rick Snyder gets to choose someone to fill her seat.

Late yesterday, I was told that one of the people he was strongly considering was an appeals court judge named, you guessed it, Kelly. Kirsten Frank Kelly.

If he does appoint her, three of Michigan’s seven supreme court justices will be blonde women named Kelly. My guess is that this would be certain to escalate the Kelly war. Kirsten Frank Kelly would have to run for reelection next year, and the Democrats would have little choice but to find another Kelly to run against her.

Incidentally, you might wonder why Judge Kirsten Kelly’s middle name is Frank. I would tell you the answer, but I don’t know. For years, people have told me it was some kind of homage to one of Michigan’s greatest political figures, former Attorney General Frank Kelley. But that’s unlikely. Kirsten Kelly was born in Illinois, five years before the attorney general took office.

So, what about bringing Frank Kelley back to run against Kirsten Frank Kelley next year? Alas, that would be against the law. You can’t run for any Michigan judicial position after you turn seventy and Frank is eighty-six. He told me he wasn’t upset by this, by the way. “I’m thinking of running for attorney general again when I’m 90,” he said. He was kidding, but legally, he could do just that.

But I do think we need to amend the state constitution. If we have term limits, we need to have Kelly limits.

I believe, in the interest of surname diversity, that no group of elected officials should be permitted to be more than 25 percent Kelly. Otherwise, there may come a day when a child named Murphy or Cavanagh will no longer feel they have any chance.

Essay: Attacking Public Employees - 1.6.11

Michigan is again facing a huge budget deficit -- and some politicians say state workers are vastly overpaid. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says the reality may be different.

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Every culture and civilization has a set of myths which are sometimes partly true, but which are exaggerated out of proportion.

For example, they say any child in America can grow up to be president. That was made more believable when Barack Obama won. But for too many children today, a decent education, let alone the White House, is an impossible dream.

We take other things on faith too. These days, something most people seem to believe is that we have too many public sector employees, that they are paid too much, and that the cost of their pensions and benefits are killing us.

As a result, it is widely expected that Governor Snyder will seek deep cuts in public sector benefits to help close a nearly two billion dollar hole in next year’s state budget.

Well, there may be no alternative to painful cuts affecting almost everybody. But there’s evidence that suggests that what you think you know about public workers’ compensation was just plain wrong. I was reminded of this recently by Roger Martin, a colleague of mine years ago at the Detroit News.

Roger isn’t exactly an unbiased observer. His lobbying firm, Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications, represents a coalition of Michigan state and local public employees called Citizens for Accountability in Reform. Naturally, they want to keep their benefits.

But he wasn’t the first person to suggest that what we thought we knew about public employee pay was just plain wrong. Michigan State University Economist Charles Ballard talked to me about this in detail two years ago. He was a co-author of a study of our state employee workforce published that summer.

The study found that the state workforce has been dramatically shrinking. In fact, it fell by nearly one-fifth in the seven years starting in 2001, and has shrunk further since then.

What’s more, according to the non-partisan House Fiscal Agency, state employees earn, on average, less than their counterparts in the private sector at every level. Ballard’s study actually concluded that state workers who haven’t graduated from college do about the same as those in the private sector. But those who have a bachelor’s degree or better make much less.

What about overheated pensions and benefits? Well, state workers have been giving back. They are paying higher premiums for health care. The state has switched from the old, expensive defined-benefit pension model to a defined contribution model, which will save the state billions, over time.

Roger Martin directed me to five other studies, none of them sponsored by his firm or his clients, that came to roughly the same conclusions, that up to now, public sector workers have been paid less and have had to sacrifice more.

That doesn’t mean that further cuts may not be avoidable. But we should consider two things. First of all, we should be a little suspicious when politicians who want tax cuts for the rich begin to demonize modestly paid public sector workers. And second, if we want to severely cut the modest compensation we pay teachers and policemen, we shouldn’t be surprised if we get inferior people in those jobs. For there is, after all, one thing that both public and private sectors have in common: You get what you pay for.

Essay: What Do We Know? - 1.5.11

It was announced today that University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez has been fired. But, yesterday’s non-stop speculation about the firing had Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinking about something else…

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Every time I turned on any radio station yesterday -- other than this one -- almost all I heard was discussion and speculation as to whether University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez had been fired, should be fired or deserved to be fired.

Michigan television stations were just as bad. They seem to have descended on Ann Arbor en masse, leaving me to wonder what real stories they were missing across the rest of our state.

However, I tend to wonder about that every day as it is. Lacking any real information, reporters opted for the famous man-or-woman-on the street interview approach. To their credit, those I saw being interviewed said mostly well-informed and nuanced things.

This may, of course, mean that those who were not experts in the fine points of Rodriguezology may have ducked into bookstores when the reporters showed up.

I wasn’t around for the fun myself, but if I had been, I would have liked to interview the same people after the Rodriguez reporters got done with them. I would have asked questions like these:

You seem to know a great deal about the University of Michigan’s football program. Did you know that the football coach makes about three times as much as President Mary Sue Coleman?

Do you think that’s appropriate? Incidentally, he is also sort of a state employee, and makes about fifteen times as much as the governor? What do you think about that?

To me, the answers to those questions might have been more interesting than the endless speculation about who the next coach might be. But if I had felt really masochistic, I would have asked these questions as well: Do you know who your state senator is?

How about your state representative? Did you know the state has an approaching budget deficit that is about seven hundred times bigger than the football coach‘s salary? Did you know we have to eliminate that deficit by the end of September?

I’ll bet I would have gotten some blank horrified stares. Then I might have asked, do you think we should raise tuition and fees at all our universities to plug some of that gap?

Do you think we should jack up the income tax instead? Or extend the sales tax to services, paying taxes on changing the brakes on your car, for example.

Don’t like that idea? Okay, how about closing the prisons and letting everybody out.

That would just about eliminate the deficit. Sound crazy? Well, yes. But the law says they have to plug that deficit somehow. We could save some money if we really shortchange the public schools.

But how would that enable Michigan to compete for the high-tech jobs of the twenty-first century? These are hard and difficult questions. They aren’t as fun as speculating whether this new coach or that new coach might turn University of Michigan football around.

To me, however, trying to save our state is more interesting, and certainly much more important. I’m not putting down sports, or our need for occasional escape. But we in the media have to do a better job of making the truly significant interesting.

Otherwise, someday, there may not even be enough money left to pay the next football coach.

Essay: Between the Cracks - 1.4.11

Congress agreed last month to continue extended unemployment benefits. But Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says that does nothing for those whose benefits have run out.

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A former student sent me an e-mail a couple days ago that made me both happy for her and concerned about our state. She had been a “ninety-niner,” Beth confided, and her prospects looked bleak.

She worried about having to move back in with mom and dad. But then, on Christmas Eve, she got a job. “Not a glamorous job, but a necessary one,” she said.

That made me happy for Beth, but also reminded me that there are at least 162,000 other ninety-niners in this state who aren’t as lucky. Ninety-niners, by the way, are people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Many have more than their own apartments to worry about; some are the sole support of their families. Many have homes they may lose. And there’s a lot of confusion about their status. “Didn’t their benefits get extended as part of the deal to extend the Bush tax cuts?” somebody asked me.

Well, no. In return for continuing the Bush-era tax cuts for even the wealthiest Americans, Congress did agree to extend emergency unemployment benefits through this year. Normally, unemployment benefits last six months at most. But when the Great Recession hit, they were extended to a maximum of 99 weeks.

That’s five weeks short of two years. After that, however, those who can’t find a job fall through a hole in the safety net.

And that’s a lot of people these days. Today’s ninety-niners are people whose jobs disappeared in the first few months of the stock market crash in late 2008. The recession deepened steadily after that, and their numbers are projected to grow.

I learned a lot about this from Gilda Jacobs, who just took a new job that involves worrying about them. Jacobs was a respected state senator whose legislative career ended four days ago, thanks to term limits. Now, she’s the new head of the Michigan League for Human Services, a uniquely non-partisan, non-profit lobbying group.

What makes them one of a kind is that they do research, policy analysis, and try to influence lawmakers on behalf of Michiganders who can’t afford a lobbyist, and may not even know what one is.

They’ve been around for almost a century, and exist to serve low-income citizens, and to try and prevent future generations from falling through the cracks.

“We want to make sure these citizens have a voice, and a place at the table,” Jacobs said. These days, there are a lot of low-income or no-income people who never imagined they’d be there.

Jacobs is a former teacher -- and she is especially worried about children. “This has been a lost generation of kids,” she told me, a generation she fears will continue to get bigger.

Learning has to start early, and pre-kindergarten programs are especially essential for poor and disadvantaged children. But they are also tempting targets for budget cutters. Jacobs knows just how dire Michigan’s finances are. Yet she asks, “If we don’t make sure these kids can learn, where will Michigan be twenty years from now?”

Governor Rick Snyder told the state Saturday that “the reinvention of Michigan must not leave anyone behind.“

The Michigan League for Human Services intends to do all it can to make sure the state lives up to that pledge.

Essay: Governor Snyder - 1.3.11

Michigan’s new governor began his administration this week with an address that called for new thinking and shared sacrifice. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thought it was a speech worth reading…

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Michigan begins the first work week of 2011 with a new governor in charge. He’s a man whose name most of us didn’t know a year ago, but whom we elected by a landslide in November.

We still don’t know exactly how Richard D. Snyder plans to make this state competitive again. But we do know this:

Everyone in Michigan -- liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats and independents -- needs to hope his administration is an amazing success.

For if he fails, we may never fully recover. Michigan, our Michigan, could end up as a Midwestern West Virginia, an old industry state with an economy left behind by modern times.

I read and listened to the new governor’s inauguration speech, which he gave on an unseasonably balmy New Year’s Day. I’ve heard a lot of these speeches. Snyder’s wasn’t notable for the grandeur of his rhetoric. It takes a while to get used to his somewhat nasal speaking delivery.

Nevertheless, it was one of the best and most candid speeches of this kind, a speech that actually read better than it sounded. He appropriately did his best to make us believe we can build a better future. But he didn’t sugarcoat where we are now.

Candidly, he told us that “the last part of the industrial era has been a period of decline in our state,” a period that has lasted decades. Our population has shrunk so much relative to the rest of the nation that we’ve lost five congressmen in recent years.

The industry that made Michigan rich and prosperous has dwindled, and yet we and our politicians have done little about it except fight among ourselves. Now, we have no choice:

We have to fix things, or else. And that, Snyder knows, “will not be simple, or easy.“

It “will require shared sacrifices from all of us,” and means many of us “will have to take a step back in the short term to move us all forward together in the long term.”

That’s not as eloquent as Winston Churchill telling wartime Britain that he could offer nothing but “blood, tears, toil and sweat.” But it was refreshing. Snyder seems to be equal parts visionary and consummate pragmatist.

Michigan is broken, he has concluded, and needs a lot more than a tuneup. It’s time for a whole new model. I thought Rick Snyder would talk about the need for all of us to become innovative and entrepreneurial, and he did some of that. But he also said this:

“The underlying key to success is to change our culture. We need to move from negative to positive. We need to stop looking in the rearview mirror, and look towards the future.”

The question is, how do we get there? Governor Snyder is facing a deficit of nearly two billion dollars.

Within a few weeks, we’ll learn how he intends to plug the gap.

He is widely expected to move to cut public employee benefits and pensions. But I found it encouraging when he told his audience: “The reinvention of Michigan must not leave anyone behind.”

None of this will be easy, as Snyder surely knows. But if he succeeds, our best days, and his, may be yet to come.