Recently John Mathias Engler has become a subject of renewed interest in Michigan media. He was a star panelist at the tax-hater sponsored Mackinac Leadership Conference in September of 2009. Engler's friends are happy "the fat boy" is back. But it isn't the best of times for Engler in the big picture here in Michigan. Most notably because pro-China Engler has been taken to task by state industrialists and the Traverse City Record Eagle as being vindictive, obstructionist and anti-Michigan manufacturing:
"Our own former governor has been completely blinded by the larger business interests that are running the NAM," Herb Trute, a southeast/downstate tool and die executive told Crain's: "And it's patently obvious to me that they have done very little to help the plight of the small manufacturer. "
Engler and the NAM have "betrayed" domestic manufacturers in U.S. dealings with the Chinese.
That editorial was chased by a follow-up letter to the Record Eagle from Joyce Braithwaite Brickley, who served as a long-time top aide to former governor William Milliken. She made this observation about the record and character of John Engler:
"No two people on the face of the earth are more familiar with the machinations and childishness of former Gov. John Engler. We put up with his small tricks, dishonesty and continuous negativity over our 15 years in the governor's office when Engler was in the state Legislature."
John Engler is a star example of a payroller politician's devotion to one's own advancement in politics at the expense of person ingenuity and civic responsibility.
Engler's policies deserve some deserve credit for helping Michigan in the '90's, however the success of the Engler Era (a robust state economy under Clinton/Gore boom) meant the national economy did most of the work, not Engler.
Engler killed the high tech corridor which was first proposed by his predecessor, a diversification that would have built on our stellar state universities and skilled workforce at the time and would have put Michigan ahead of other regions and headed off the downward spiral of our over-dependence on the auto. Engler also failed to secure statewide "latest generation access" to the internet.
There are others who falsely believed that Engler's philosophy and tactics, while onerous and meanspirited, (constantly touted by the Detroit News and its conjoined philosophical twin, corporatist/insurance endowed and controlled Mackinac Center) were "the" building blocks of a better future for Michigan.
All those Engler tax cuts and give backs should have produced a "new economy" which would have taken the edge off our precipitous fall; when the auto companies and suppliers were sandbagged under George Bush and his former auto guy, Andrew Card which led to the near catastrophic disappearance of both GM and Chrysler.
If the Engler Era were the masterful marvel it bragged it was, and if, until just the before the 2002 election, the governorship, the entire state legislature and the judiciary was tightly controlled by mavens of Englernomics: Why did Michigan's fabulous manufacturing base and its world class, high-pay jobs market tank?
Michigan's sharp decline started well before John Engler had cleared his mementos from the governor's suite? John left office having seen thousands of jobs lost and he left Jennifer Granholm a deficit of over one billion dollars.
Now, due to inherent and systemic weaknesses and flaws built into Michigan governance by John Engler (Cut and Scrap state programs), coupled with the crippling effects of term limits, and the massive effects of a failed George W. Bush administration, huge national debt, and the Bush 2008 financial collapse, Michigan is on the ropes.
Who will rescue Michigan Republicans from the pitiless Englerite games Snyder and crowd desperately continue, trying to duplicate utilizing and expanding the harsh "bully boy" politics of "Big John"?
What will it take to ferret out those anti-tax wing nuts whop hide behind the flypaper ideology they have hung for unassuming tax-hating rustics, all those who bought the touted Engler's Revolution theme: Just do more with less?
Yes, Engler left Granholm a staggering debt, over one billion dollars in the hole. Worse yet, Engler left an overpowering negativist political attitude that blocks any real effort at bi-partisan co-operation to face the new reality even as the Mackinac Center sees it:
"For starters, states with an "agricultural legacy" such as Mississippi typically have a long history of lower incomes. In a paper on right-to-work states, economist W. Robert Reed wrote that an 'important determinant' of current wages is how large a share of a state's total income in the past was generated by the agricultural sector: 'The economic past still casts a long shadow on the economic present.' Scholars (or politicians) who fail to consider a state's economic past may misinterpret reasons for its economic well-being or lack thereof today... In plain terms, Michigan began the time period covered ...as a relatively wealthy industrial powerhouse, but over the past 60 years has trended lower. Mississippi started dirt-poor and has made great strides against long odds and obstacles."
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