Before President Barack Ex-Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s dismissive relationship with key legislative leaders like House Leader Mike Bishop (right) contributed to repeated government shutdowns. AP photo. )<\/p>\n
Obama won re-election with a negative assault on Mitt Romney\u2019s wealth, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s 2006 class warfare campaign earned her a second term over businessman Dick DeVos.<\/p>\n
Before Obama launched his second term with a GOP-defying State of the Union speech\u00a0demanding more spending<\/a>\u00a0to stimulate a sluggish economy, Granholm\u2019s 2007 State of the State speech promised the same. And before Obama and the GOP went over the cliff on a government shutdown, Granholm and Republicans took the plunge in 2007.<\/p>\n Michigan has seen this train wreck before. We are reliving Granholm\u2019s failed second term.<\/p>\n The dysfunctional tenures of Obama and Granholm are a lesson in what ails Washington today and what once dogged Michigan: A lack of executive branch leadership. While the pundit class sniffs at the current shutdown as an aberration \u201cbrewed by the tea party\u201d (as The Washington Posts\u2019 reliable purveyor of conventional wisdom,\u00a0E.J. Dionne, puts it<\/a>), the Michigan shutdown came in 2007 \u2014 before the tea party existed \u2014 because Democrats and Republicans have fundamentally different visions about the role of government.<\/p>\n Such governing splits are hardly unprecedented and demand executive leadership. In the tense budget standoffs of the early 1980s, former President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill built a relationship based on respect. \u201cHorse trading, compromise and negotiation made the government work,\u201d\u00a0recounts<\/a>\u00a0ex-Reagan Chief-of-Staff James Baker in The Wall Street Journal. Bill Clinton too \u201cwas willing to negotiate when he had a body controlled by the opposite party.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the Obama and Granholm eras, that leadership has been absent.<\/p>\n Harvard Law School-trained and charismatic \u2014 but with little governing experience \u2014 Granholm and Obama are political twins who manage by elevating demagoguery over political relationships. As a result, their governing styles breed crisis after crisis.<\/p>\n In the first budget of her second term, Granholm\u00a0insisted on<\/a>\u00a0new taxes to pay for new green \u201cinvestments\u201d even as Michigan\u2019s economy struggled. Similarly, Obama has insisted on enacting Obamacare despite evidence its mandates are strangling job creation.<\/p>\n Grassroots activists are the backbone of both political parties and in 2007, pink pig-hauling activist Leon Drolet stiffened elephant spines by threatening to recall legislators who supported Granholm\u2019s tax hike.\u00a0Battle lines were drawn<\/a>: pro-Big Government House Democrats vs. small government Senate Republicans. Lansing careened toward a shutdown. Ratings services warned the state\u2019s bond rating would be downgraded.<\/p>\n But rather than bridge the divide, Granholm reacted with a page right of Obama\u2019s playbook. \u201cPeople will die,\u201d she said of Republican offers to cut services rather than raise taxes. No negotiations. Just a relentless game of shutdown chicken.<\/p>\n Granholm \u201cappeared to be disassociated from the process, except to issue occasional press releases criticizing \u2018the legislature\u2019 or \u2018Senate Republicans\u2019 for failing to adopt her budget recommendations,\u201d wrote the Mackinac Center.<\/p>\n Sound familiar?<\/p>\n For five years, Obama has neglected the hard work of building relationships with Congress. Instead of fighting the country\u2019s fiscal fires, he has given incendiary speeches. And when the GOP foolishly overreached and demanded defunding Obamacare, Obama predictably reacted in kind, putting Washington on course for shutdown.<\/p>\n Where do we go from here? Granholm\u2019s second term foreshadows more of the same. Following the 2007 debacle (Republicans caved to a tax hike yet deficits soared), Granholm would go on to preside over another shutdown in 2009.<\/p>\n