Summary: <p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">Our Legislature’s refusal to do what’s needed to fix the roads made me remember a brilliant political move many years ago.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">President Harry Truman was running for reelection, and his chances didn’t look good.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">He was a Democrat, and had a Republican Congress that didn’t want to cooperate on anything he wanted. So he called them back for a special session during the campaign. He challenged Congress to pass laws the nation needed.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">They totally refused, as he knew they would. Most commentators thought that made him look weak. Truman knew better. He campaigned hard against the “do-nothing Congress.”</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">In the end, he won the biggest upset of all time, and Republicans lost a whopping 84 seats in Congress.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">Governor Rick Snyder also could, if he wanted, call a special session of the Michigan Legislature and ask them to get it done and come up with the money to fix the roads.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">But that’s not going to happen.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;"> </p><div class="wysiwyg-asset-pullquote-wrapper pullquote-style-inset" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; float: right; width: 280px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;"><div class="wysiwyg-asset-pullquote" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 2px; border-left-color: #434343; font-size: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #434343; line-height: 28px; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">... we should all realize that we will be living in a highly dangerous world if the public becomes convinced that democracy just doesn't work, and believe there is no way they can make their representatives respond to their needs.</div></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;"> </p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">For one thing, this time the governor’s party controls the Legislature. For another, they’d plainly resent the executive branch telling them what to do, and if this still failed to produce new money for the roads, everyone would look bad.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">However, what the leaders of the Legislature need to be doing this very minute is talking to each other – and the governor — and figuring out an agreement, getting the lawmakers back in session for a day or two and pass laws to fix the roads.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">It has long been clear that Michigan badly needs to pour billions of dollars into the roads as soon as possible. To not do so not only endangers our axles, but damages efforts to attract new business.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">However, there is another reason it is essential that the Legislature do this: To restore faith in government. People don’t have a lot of it today, and Lansing is making that worse.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">Beyond any doubt, the citizens’ top priority is road repair.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">But Michigan’s Legislature not only ignored the voters and refused to pass a plan to fix the roads, they stopped trying and went on a two-month vacation mainly to campaign for reelection.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">This prompted all sorts of cries, some of them from the state’s major newspapers, to just vote all the rascals out in November.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">But here’s why that mostly won’t work. Thanks to outrageous gerrymandering, most lawmakers are in utterly safe one-party districts. They will get reelected no matter what they do.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">They can only be threatened by a challenge in the August primary, and it is too late to put new candidates on the ballot. The few lawmakers who do face primary challenges are mainly running against anti-tax fanatics who would be even worse for the roads.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">However, we should all realize that we will be living in a highly dangerous world if the public becomes convinced that democracy just doesn’t work, and believe there is no way they can make their representatives respond to their needs.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">The grownups I talk with understand the roads need to be fixed, and that this will cost money.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 22px;">Now we need lawmakers who are willing to be adults as well. And just come back and fix the roads. </p>
