Lansing rope-a-dope must end

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something significant brewing right now in Michigan. A change in tone. A shift in the wind.

Or maybe it’s fear. And certainly, fear of several more years of our “single-state recession” has been intensified by the national financial crisis, which now looks as though it’s going to be deeper and longer than the experts thought at first.

Part of it has to be something we ought to have recognized long ago, but which is just dawning on millions of Michiganders: The domestic auto industry, so long the mainstay of our economy, might — just might — cease to exist. That would certainly be the case if Washington doesn’t come through this month with a financial package to save General Motors.

What’s more likely, of course, is that there will be some kind of domestic auto industry, still based largely in Michigan, but downsized and changed beyond recognition. Maybe what so many of us are feeling is frustration. Here we are in the middle of a terrible jam, and our political leadership seems collectively stuck in neutral, spinning its wheels and busy pointing the fingers of blame, but essentially getting nothing done.

There are many straws in the wind that suggest a pattern:

1) Last week, Daniel Howes, the diligent and tough-m inded columnist for the Detroit News, pointed out that “the No. 1 automaker took less than two weeks to craft the most aggressive restructuring plan in the automaker’s history. … If a financially distressed GM can do it, so can the state of Michigan.”

2) A study released last week by Detroit Renaissance, the heavy-duty Southeastern Michigan business leadership organization, found that metro Detroit is not nationally competitive in business costs, and that firms looking to invest in Michigan were too often warded off by high labor costs, taxes and other incentives. In response, The Detroit News editorialized that “the political leadership of this state keeps looking for ways to tread water.”

3) David Brandon, the chair of Detroit Renaissance and CEO of Domino’s Pizza, went on the record in expressing his frustration with our political leadership. He detailed a meeting with Speaker of the House Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester), in which “they nodded agreement and expressed thanks to business leaders,” after which, as always, “nothing happens and nothing changes.”

4) Former State Superintendent of Instruction Tom Watkins called this week for us “to use the economic storm to stiffen our resolve, drop the political bickering and develop action plans.” He urged private sector leaders to call for a “Shared Vision/Common Agenda” economic summit before the end of the year.

You may remember the Emergency Financial Advisory Panel, a high-powered bipartisan group convened by Governor Jennifer Granholm almost two years ago when the state was facing a massive budget crisis. Within weeks, it proposed a series of far-reaching reforms in the structure and cost of state and local government. Now, nearly two years later, the report remains largely and disgracefully ignored.

Over the last week, I’ve been at several meetings in Lansing, all of which reached the identical conclusion: Nobody can get anywhere because of a leadership vacuum at the top. “Dillon blames Bishop, then Bishop blames Dillon and Granholm, then Granholm blames Bishop. They just point fingers at each other going round and round the circle,” one insider told me.

Some even suggested it was conscious gaming, a form of rope-a-dope being played on frustrated business leaders. This is, of course, ultra-cynical. But cynicism is a predictable result of frustration. The next step, of course, is anger. Even in the best of times, there is always a gap between the governed and those doing the governing. But I’m beginning to get the impression that it’s no longer a gap, but a yawning gulf. People just don’t believe our state’s elected leaders have the capacity, the urgency or the will to perform the jobs they were elected to get done.

And that is terribly worrisome for democracy. Even more than our frighteningly uncertain economy, this loss of trust is the most dangerous problem of all. Are you listening, Governor Granholm? Speaker Dillon? Senate Majority Leader Bishop?

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Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank which publishes the Michigan Scorecard. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.