By John Lindstrom
Publisher
Posted: June 14, 2018 1:23 PM

Introducing this resource, let’s get philosophical-like and remember what George Santayana wrote: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement, and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

No one suggests politicians, legislators and policymakers are perpetual infants. Not in public, anyway. But those who have watched the governing process sometimes wonder why various proposals and tactics are tried by governors, legislators and others when similar proposals were tried in the past and failed to accomplish what was promised.

Didn’t they know any better?, wags often wag about such situations.

Probably they did not, and with the often bumbling history of term limits, they did not have to chance to learn.

Which brings us to a real resource that can help anyone running for office, in office, or working as a policy aide obtain some of the knowledge needed. And get that knowledge, and real wisdom, from folks who had been there, seen and endured the struggles, and enjoyed success or were forced to learn from failures.

This resource has been around for a long while, now, yet it still seems largely unknown.

Ladies and gents, welcome to the James J. Blanchard Living Library of Michigan Political History, a project of the Michigan Political History Society. Here are 35 lengthy interviews with many of Michigan’s top leaders of the last 70 years. They include Democrats and Republicans, elected officials, judges, one governor (to date, that being Mr. Blanchard), and people who had major influence though they were not elected officials (folks like Tom Downs and Richard McLellan).

Now, this reporter is not plugging this site just because his excessively bald head is the one interviewing former Treasurer Doug Roberts in the latest installment. This series of interviews – many conducted by former Rep. Lynn Jondahl or journalists, and former Sen., Bill Ballenger – is a fascinating collection of insights, stories, reflections, criticisms, self-assessments and more into how Michigan government developed, the issues lawmakers and voters faced, how proposals and solutions were reached.

It also allows one to get to know more the personal aspects of those leaders: how former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer grew up in a house without running water in Cassopolis; the early years of former UAW President Doug Fraser in Glasgow, Scotland; how former Speaker Gary Owen’s father was convicted of murder in Alabama and how Mr. Owen came to Michigan as a high school dropout to work in the auto industry and got involved in politics; former Republican Chair Elly Peterson remembering passing out sunflower seeds for GOP Presidential Candidate Alf Landon in 1936 in a pouring rain on Michigan Avenue in Chicago while the Chicago Tribune’s owner Colonel Robert McCormick shouted encouragement from his limousine; and how Mr. Roberts spent time as a professional duckpin bowler.

These interviews, some which go back more than 20 years, are important because many of those interviewed are gone. Ms. Peterson, Mr. Fraser, Appeals Judge Glenn Allen, former Detroit Mayor Roman Gribbs, former U.S. Sen. And Supreme Court Justice Robert Griffin, and others. That makes the knowledge they imparted that much more important to maintain.

Since the interviews go back 20 years, it also injects some regret for the people that did not get interviewed such as former Governor George Romney, former House Speaker Bill Ryan, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Faust, former Justice Mary Stallings Coleman, former Lt. Governor and Justice James Brickley and so many others also now gone.

And the budgets for these interviews is somewhat limited (which is kind of an indirect plug for folks to perhaps help out the Michigan Political History Society). There are so many people who should be interviewed, for example Mr. Jondahl, former Rep. and Lansing Mayor Dave Hollister, former House Republican leaders Bill Bryant and Mike Busch, former Senate Majority Leader Dan DeGrow, all the former governors (as well as the soon-to-be former governor) former Speaker Lew Dodak, Eugene Wenger and former Sen. Jack Faxon who are two of the few remaining 1961 Constitutional Convention delegates, former Sen. Shirley Johnson, a lot of former Supreme Court justices, and there are more. Anyone involved in state government can come up with a list.

Journalists have not been interviewed to date, which is a pity, but those who spent decades toiling in covering the big top and all the side shows should be interviewed as well.

And as a journalist who has in nearly 50 years interviewed probably1,000 people, interviewing Mr. Roberts forced me to think: I am not interviewing him to get a lede for a story, I am interviewing him for the sake of history. But it is only of value if people learn from it and use that knowledge.