Dan

Calabrese

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January 14, 2008

Mitt Romney to the Rescue, So Michigan Can Remain Ridiculous

Those of us who have lived here a long time have heard the expression. There are two ways to do things – the right way and the Michigan way.

The self-destructive Michigan way has many ill-advised elements, but an ever-present one is the expectation that Washington will bail us out while enabling us to continue doing things the way we’ve always done them.

So perhaps Michigan thought it was actually solving something by moving its primary up to January 15 – breaking the rules of both parties and costing it all its Democratic delegates – because it could entice candidates to come here and promise the latest federal rescue of Michigan, without requiring Michigan to change anything.

And it looks like Mitt Romney has taken the bait.

Romney’s father George was our governor in the 1960s. Mitt, who was born here, tells the Grand Rapids Press this is all personal for him, and insists, “I will not sleep until Michigan is strong and active and vibrant again.”

And you thought Jack Bauer stayed up late.

I love my state. I can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. But Michigan creates so many problems for itself it is hard to know where to begin. While the rest of the nation enjoys a growing economy and unemployment at or below 5 percent, Michigan’s is 7.4 percent and our own Senate Fiscal Agency foresees the figure rising to 8.5 percent this year.

The state couldn’t even create the illusion of balancing its budget without enacting tax increases – most notoriously a tax on services – which it then went back and repealed.

Our largest city has been a depressed, corruption-ridden, drug-infested war zone for more than a generation.

Michigan has scarcely done anything right during my 41 years on this Earth. But what Michigan does worst is face reality.

Here is reality: Michigan’s economic health has depended almost entirely on manufacturing jobs – specifically automotive – for the past century. These jobs are leaving in droves and are never coming back. There are many reasons for this. The Big Three automakers have agreed to labor deals they could not afford. They have far too much capacity. They make overpriced cars people do not want to buy, and even when someone does buy one, the automakers still don’t make a profit because they have essentially become health care companies who sell cars to limit their bleeding.

Automotive suppliers get squeezed so badly on price that they are lucky if the Big Three will allow them to do anything more than break even. None of this lends itself to the hope of good jobs for future generations, so young people are leaving the state in droves. Our governor has tried to keep them here by creating “Cool Cities” with lots of nightspots and bars.

Maybe at least a few of the booze hounds will stick around.

So when the presidential candidates showed up over the past few days, the only honest thing they could have told Michigan was: “Quit acting stupid.”

Give John McCain credit. He came close to doing just that. McCain stated what any honest observer would have to describe as the obvious: Michigan’s lost manufacturing jobs are never coming back. They are a relic of yesteryear, and if Michigan wants to come back, it needs to retrain its workers and embrace new economic models not based on the viability of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

But Michigan doesn’t want to hear that. Michigan wants to hear what Mitt Romney said, which is that McCain’s statement is defeatist, that Michigan should not give up on getting back its manufacturing jobs and that President Romney will make it a personal mission to bring those jobs back.

Evidently, since Romney was born here, the disease is genetic. Whether we’re sending Lee Iacocca to Washington to grovel for loan guarantees, or sending Carl Levin off to protect Michigan’s industries from competitors, nothing has changed for at least a generation.

Michigan must always be the automotive state, relying on an industry of the past and begging the federal government for protection in equal parts from foreign competition and its own bad decisions. Michigan will maintain its high-tax, high-labor-cost economic structure. Michigan will not change.

Romney says Michigan’s problems are “the canary in the mine shaft,” which apparently means this: “What Michigan is experiencing, the whole nation will experience unless we fix what's happening in Michigan and learn lessons here we can apply across the nation.”

No. The rest of the nation is not experiencing what Romney calls a “one-state recession” because the rest of the nation doesn’t cling like grim death to three anachronistic companies who are dragging it down into economic oblivion.

Michigan doesn’t need the president of the United States to rescue it. We’ve tried that more than once. Michigan needs a swift kick in the pants and a new perspective on its economic future.

The Michigan way doesn’t work. Mitt Romney either can’t see it or won’t say it, neither of which recommends him for the presidency.

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