Cross-posted from michiganliberal.com
It's been frustrating to read the papers here this week. With the collapse of Delphi, Michigan's auto industry appears to have started its final slide into the depths. It's not like we didn't see it coming. In reality, this is a death spiral that started decades ago. But, according to senior state Capitol correspondent Tim Skubick, Gov.
Granholm will be blamed:
"What are you going to say to your critics who contend this happened on your watch?"
With a mortified look on her face, Granholm blurted out, "Come oooon. Come ooon. The citizens aren't stupid ... They know I didn't cause Delphi's bankruptcy."
Do they? The governor's assertion that voters aren't dumb is based on the very shaky assumption that when it comes time to vote, citizens will do their homework and give her the benefit of the doubt.
The sorry fact is, many voters are lazy, ignorant and don't know the definition of due diligence. Therefore, they are very susceptible to believing Republican propaganda that Granholm is solely to blame. (quote continues below the jump)
Remember, she's been working with a GOP Legislature on all this, too. But by the time the GOP gets done with a barrage of negative commercials tagging her for the bankruptcy and other economic faults, many voters will also believe she was responsible for the earthquake in Pakistan and the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.
Uninformed voters in the last race for president, for example, were hammered with the GOP message that Democrat John Kerry was a flip-flopper. Too lazy to seek out other information, many voters bought the label hook, line and sinker. That, despite the fact that George W. Bush had done as many back flips as an acrobat in a circus.
Indeed, Skubick's prophesy is already coming to pass.
This from Republican state chairman Saulius "Saul" Anuzis:
"While 49 other governors have found solutions that strengthened their economies and continue to create jobs, Michigan's governor has done nothing. Jennifer Granholm chooses to criticize Michigan workers rather than offer solutions to protect their jobs. The working families of this state deserve more than just an apology; they deserve a new governor who will fight for their jobs and the future of Michigan."
No, things aren't looking so good this week. Time for a little reflection. So for the Guv and any other interested parties, allow me to ruminate a little...
When I think about opportunity for all Americans, I think about my grandfather.
He ran a country store in our little town of Hope. There were no food stamps back then, so when his customers -- whether they were white or black, who worked hard and did the best they could, came in with no money--well, he gave them food anyway --just made a note of it. So did I. Before I was big enough to see over the counter, I learned from him to look up to people other folks looked down on.
My grandfather just had a grade-school education. But in that country store he taught me more about equality in the eyes of the Lord than all my professors at Georgetown; more about the intrinsic worth of every individual than all the philosophers at Oxford; and he taught me more about the need for equal justice than all the jurists at Yale Law School.
If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.
William Jefferson Clinton, 1992
It might not seem like it in these times of collapsing manufacturers, skyrocketing health care costs, and broken budgets - but we have a Hope in Michigan. It's northwest of Midland, just off of highway M-30, surrounded by cornfields, and past a giant sign proclaiming "DNR: Damn Near Russia."
On a whim a couple of weeks ago, the Hannahdog and I drove to Hope, Michigan. It was a beautiful day, the Michigan-Michigan State game was on the radio, and I had nothing in particular to do. And after overdosing on an abundance of bummer headlines in the Michigan papers, I decided I needed to find even a glimmer of Hope - even if it meant driving all the way from Lansing to Midland County.
I remember hearing Bill Clinton's speech about Hope when I was 16. For someone who at the time only carried unhappy memories of presidents named Reagan and Bush, it was like the second coming. I remember how much it meant to me when Clinton and I shook hands at the rope line of his rally outside Rackham Auditorium. "That man is going to change everything" I thought - "and I shook hands with him."
Not long after President Clinton took office, I took an internship in the Ann Arbor office of the late U.S. Rep. William D. Ford (D-Ypsilanti Twp.). Congressman Ford was at the pinnacle of his power then. As the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, he was responsible for making sure the Family and Medical Leave Act made it to the White House in timely fashion so that it could become the first major new law of the Clinton era. As someone who got his college education through the G.I. bill, Ford was a major backer of increasing aid to higher education. To this day the Federal Direct Student Loan program (defunded under Bush)
bears Congressman Ford's name. As I clipped newspapers and answered constituent phone calls (usually angry), I remember how proud I was to be playing a small part in building a new, bright future for our nation.
With Bill Clinton, everything seemed possible. I think I can understand how some of the babyboomers used to feel about JFK. I wanted - with all of my being - to believe that this one man could fix all of our problems. When President Clinton pushed for the North American Free Trade Agreement, Congressman Ford fought against him. I remember working in a smoky UAW hall in Willow Run as the boss fulminated publicly about how NAFTA was a bunch of "bullshit" to the war whoops of the crowd in attendance. I kept my mouth shut. I wanted NAFTA to pass. President Clinton wanted it done, and I trusted him. I was 16.
NAFTA may have worked out all right for the economists and columnists who live on the east or west coasts. But for us in Michigan, the utopian visions of the world's people joining hands, singing songs, and reveling in the bounty of global commerce - never materialized. Instead, Wal-Marts now dot our landscape and we turn from manufacturing automobiles to manufacturing hamburgers. And as our state's means of survival turns to dust, economists continue to speak glowingly of "competing in the global economy" and how we should really just get over our problems. This is just a bump in the road. Prosperity is just around the corner. Any day now all of our former autoworkers and hamburger manufacturers will be "knowledge merchants" and everything will be wonderful.
There still remains, in the corner of my soul, a measure of hope. I try to nurse it every day. But the feeling I had that bone-chilling night in Ann Arbor 13 years ago is long gone. It was more than just NAFTA. Reality set in with the rise of Gingrich, the failure of health care reform...a stained blue dress. And yes, I'm older now. The experiences of life - college, career, death of loved ones, divorce, and loss have all given me a much more sober way of looking at things. But still...for some odd reason, I keep believing there remains a chance that Spring may someday arrive.
I believe this because I have to. Just existing to accumulate new toys or experiences isn't enough. Somewhere along the way I came away with the idea that it's the duty of each human being to do all they can to leave the world a better place than that which we found. Of course, we may or may not succeed. But we need to try - even if it kills us. That is our duty and it is what we are here to do. For me, a life without hope is not a life worth living.
Hope, Michigan is so small, I almost missed it. As I hurried out the door, I forgot to grab a decent map. Sadly, the "Atlas & Gazetteer" that lives in my car is missing the page for Midland County - the Hannahdog inadvertently shredded it to pieces as the map book sat in the back seat.
So I used the remainder of the book to navigate the backroads as far as I could - first east - then north. Eventually, we made it to the northwest side of Midland and began circling, looking for signs of Hope (yes, I am a man and yes, I do not ask for directions unless it's absolutely necessary!).
We kept making wrong turns as we drove over the straight, narrow, and extremely FLAT terrain that makes up the northern end of Midland County. We accidentally turned into Gladwin county, retraced our path, and ventured on. Finally, at the end of the first half of the Michigan-Michigan State game, we found Hope Township. An old cobblestone school that's been converted to a residence marked the corner. "Well", I thought, I wonder if there's more to Hope than that? I wonder if there's actually a village of Hope?
Across the map of our state, there are perhaps hundreds of names affixed to the intersections of various obscure county roadways. They're the names of towns or outposts that once existed - like Delhi, Raisin Center, Aral, or Trowbridge - but disappeared after the mill closed, the forest was cut, or the railroad locomotives no longer needed coal. I worried that the town of Hope might be one of these - a vestige of another time when most Michiganians made their living off the soil.
At last, a sign at the end of the road pointed the way to a post office! Yes! This must be it! We drove down the road about a ½ mile when I saw another road headed south. "Hope Rd." the sign said. There was clearly a small assembly of buildings and trees over the horizon. But there was no new sign pointing the way to the post office.
I decided to risk it. I stopped the car, backed up, and turned left. Very soon, the little red cone of the Hope Volunteer Fire Department's siren came into view. There were a few ranch houses, a few churches - and a small brick building with a cornfield growing beyond the back fence. The aluminum letters read: "U.S. POST OFFICE - HOPE, MICH. 48628." Yes! I thought, Hope exists!
One of the locals in the driveway gave me a funny look as I snapped some digital pictures of the post office. But I didn't care. I found hope. And without a map!
The world is changing. It always does. And maybe there really isn't much nine million people who live on two North American peninsulas can do to help themselves. That's certainly what the papers and the politicians keep telling us. "There's nothing we can do. It's a national problem - those people in Washington need to do something about health care, pensions - or these trade agreements." It's all true, of course. But then I think about the people down in New Orleans who once said: "those people in Washington need to fix these levees before a hurricane breaks them." And, when levees did break, the same people expected "those people in Washington" would be there to help take the people of New Orleans to safety.
I no longer have any faith in "those people in Washington." Maybe that's what died when President Clinton went away. But even if the "good guys" (the Democrats) took over again, the obstacles of campaign finance, hairdo journalism, hyper materialism, and TV religion in a nation of over 300 million people would still be there. Don't get me wrong, I'll keep fighting the good fight. But do I have hope for America? I can't honestly say. I'd like to. But damned if I know where to find it.
So I look to this "pleasant peninsula", this land between the lakes, where the outline of the hand of God is still visible from outer space. I choose to believe there is something special about this place. The forests, the clear, fresh waters, and most of all the solid toughness of the people who continue to fight on, even as "those people in Washington" make things worse and worse...and worse.
When I was a kid in the 1980's, and the plants were closing one after another, people in Michigan used to joke: "last one out, turn out the lights." And a lot of people did leave. But here we are in 2005. And the lights are still on.
Soon, more factories will close. More schools will be empty. Neighborhoods will be destroyed. Corner grocery stores will fail. People will lose their homes, cars...their savings. And there will be more golden parachutes for the people in suits. There will be more rejoinders against "class warfare", more mistrust between rich and poor, black and white...and late-night pyramid schemes that claim to have the magic solution to all of our problems. There will be more shootings, more overflowing jails. There will be strife in the streets. There will be more press releases, more sound bytes, more campaign commercials, more polls, more $1,000 a plate fundraising dinners, more lies, and more deception. All of these things will happen. And the people of Michigan will march on.
We'll march partly because many of us have no choice.
But maybe - just maybe - a leader will emerge. Someone who, no matter the destruction that is store, shares our burden. Someone who is not content to merely wait for "those people in Washington", but who will leave no stone unturned - politically expedient or not - to help those who suffer. Someone who cares about the people of Michigan so much, they are willing to give up all they have, all they have worked for - their very life - to make their future just a little bit brighter. If such a leader emerges, the people will see this person, and know they have a friend. And it will give them hope.
This past winter, as I pondered the significance of our latest defeat, I picked up a copy of William Manchester's
book about Winston Churchill in the years leading up to the Second World War. It seemed utterly appropriate. Few people are better acquainted with the notion of struggle than Churchill.
In the beginning of the 1930's, Churchill was an outcast. Each time, as the Germans re-armed, as they took the Sudetenland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland...Churchill sounded the alarm. And each time he was shunned, criticized, and most often just ignored altogether. But Churchill pressed on. He knew the threat was real. And as he fought on, others joined him...and then more, and more.
Eventually, the Member of Parliament for Epping had assembled what could rightly be considered his own personal intelligence service - made up of military and government officials who, like Churchill, recognized the grave danger facing Great Britain. When war finally did arrive, the man who was a pariah only eight years before took the reigns of the nation in its most critical hour. And he's remembered today as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century.
Reading about Churchill gave me hope. It's comforting to know that others have faced challenges far greater than ours and endured. In my Christmas cards to my fellow Democrats, I enclosed a small scrap of paper containing the well-known "never give in" quote from Churchill. One of them I even sent to the Governor's mansion.
Churchill delivered his famous quotation not long after the bombs fell and people slept in the subways of Greater London. But there was
much more that Churchill had to say that day in 1941 as he addressed a gathering of schoolchildren:
You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.
You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honour, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise in darker days."
I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
So in these "stern days" that now confront us, let me say that I
still believe in a place called Hope. To be sure, it's not easy to find without a map.
But you'll get there if you just keep searching.