A veteran Lansing chronicler of state government reached a tipping point late this week and tells why vividly.
"I have stayed quiet too long," posts John Lindstrom, publisher since 1993 of Gongwer News Service, a daily staple for lawmakers, bureaucrats, lobbyists, journalists and other Capitol wonks.
Gongwer News Service is a daily dietary staple for Capitol wonks.
Bet you can guess what pushes him to compare the Michigan House to "a high school dance committee."
I sat Thursday and into Friday slack-jawed, . . . wondering [what] the bloody hell was going on at the Michigan House of Representatives in regards to expelling – or maybe not – Rep. Todd Courser and Rep. Cindy Gamrat. . . .
Is there really anything more absurd than the spectacle of lawmakers sitting hours, munching pizza and subs, joking with each other, when the issue to be decided is if fellow members are cast out? This is what Michigan had to watch.
With Courser and Gamrat gone after barely eight months in office, Lindstrom uses his blog post to suggest a more sweeping move:
The time has long since come . . . to rid ourselves of term limits. It was a noble, though wrong-headed, experiment to provide more responsive leadership to the state’s needs. . . .
Term limits have failed, failed utterly. And the best evidence of that is the disaster that occurred before Mr. Courser finally resigned and Ms. Gamrat was expelled.
The publisher, a Michigan State graduate (1974) and former Crain's Detroit Business reporter (1986-92), feels this week's "ham-handed proceedings were candidly a result of term limits:"
Unlike the previous expulsion efforts, there was a decided lack of intentional bipartisanship, and an overall failure to demonstrate the proper concern for the integrity of the institution. . . .
The scandal has been an excuse for both sides to employ inappropriate and useless partisan tactics that have impressed absolutely no one. . . .
The greatest benefit of the pre-term limit era was the ability for legislators to get to know one another and respect each other. . . . It is impossible to understate the importance and significance of that human characteristic in governing. It is a characteristic one starts to see in the legislators who have been here the longest under term limits, and then it vanishes when they do.
That characteristic of mutual respect also mutes much of the political rancor. The parties still took their shots at one another in years past and ran feverish campaigns. But they did not equate their opponents with Satan; they did not see them as lost souls doomed to eternity.
And when faced with something like an expulsion, this ability to work together was invaluable. The respect for both the institution and the state’s people took precedence over principles . . . and party affiliation.
On the off-chance any readers don't get the intensity of his outrage, Lindstrom declares:
This is the House, the Legislature, we deserve. . . .
It is the fault of the voters who convinced themselves term limits was the best option for good government. . . .
Term limits will be hard to repeal or even amend. But for the good of our state, . . . term limits must go.
