our guests toda have a long history in this town they are Mike Ranville and Fritz Benson.

They're here to promote a new cooperative government effort as they talk about their We site, about my good government.

Former state officials and others have contributed inside personal stories on what it's like back in the day.

And these two will talk about it.

So sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record production of Off the Record is made possible in par by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com and now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C a special post Thanksgiving Day event with our two gentlemen here who are on a mission.

Aren't you guys?

Mike and Fritz, welcome to Off the Record.

Talk to me about this Web site and were you guys just sitting around one night are on the fireplace saying let's do this?

What happened?

Well, Tim, periodically a lot of the people that work in the camp will tell you develop friendships and you meet periodically after and inevitabl stories of the capital are told.

Some of them are true.

Yes.

And some of them even we can even tell in mixed company.

Yes.

Anyways, we Fritz and I left one of those things one nigh and we just looked at each other and we said, you know, somebod ought to write this stuff down.

Because it was really funny and it was the the stories have sort of been caroming off the walls of the Capitol for years and we thought it would be nice just to sit down and to write them down.

And then so we started and then Fritz had a conversation with then speaker Bobby Crim and I'll let Fritz take it, you know, one day.

And we thought we'd get back, you know, some stories, kind of humorous anecdotes and stuff like that.

And I'm at the Michigan Athletic Club one morning and locker by mine was Speaker Crim, former Speaker Bobby Crim.

And so I'm just talking to him about the project.

We're just startin to get going with the project.

And I said, How is your relationship with Governor Milliken?

And he said, I had a great relationship with Governor Milliken.

You know, every year up until he passed away, I would go up and see him in Traverse City and we'd go out to dinner and we would talk about all kinds of things.

Really I never heard that.

He said, Well, I just did it on my own type thing.

And I said, Well, how did you work with him?

Legislative.

You were a pretty strident Democratic leader.

And he said, Well, you know, back then we had the quadrant and it was Governor Milliken, then myself as speaker in the House, Republican leade in the Senate majority leader, who was a Democrat and the Senate Republican leader.

And when there would be a tough issue that would bog down in the legislature, we didn't meet often, but we would get together and talk about it and everything go okay.

And he said, Oh, no, we would get angry.

We'd throw stuff down, you know, and sometimes people would stomp out, but we all wanted to solve the issue for Michigan citizens, you know, for the workers, for the businesses, worker comp being one example.

And he said we seem to have some success.

And so I took that back to Mike and said, let's dig deeper on this because there's some real stories here.

Okay, but why dig deeper?

What's the what's the hidden agenda here, gentlemen?

And it and we think that legislators, at least the majority of the legislators that come in, don't come i to be vindictive to each other.

We think that there's a central purpose and we would like to at least have our project launch a dialog as to how we can return to the type of civility that Speaker Crim and Governor Milliken had.

And we were frankly surprised and that legislators, former legislators, current legislators, people from the fourth estate, lobbyists, staffers, they were comin out of the woodwork to say, yes, they didn't want to talk about the funny little things that are going on.

They wante to take the opportunity to say there was a time when it worked.

Dan Lemp was chief of staff to Curtis Hertel during the shared power agreement back in the well, 2000 and whatever, 2002, I think was when it was just when the R's and the D's wer tied in the house at 55-55.

Yes.

And they had to share the power and they worked out a plan to do it.

Yes, they did.

And Dan wrote a story in it.

It sort of launched the whole effort.

Paul Hiligonds then came in and he said, Yeah, I'd love to contribute.

And it just sort of took off from there.

And we were frankly, people were coming.

We started off soliciting stories and then people started coming to us.

And offering up, Yeah, so what?

Who's the intended audience here?

Well, good question, because it's what started out as kind of a michigan directed project showing that we can work together.

And but we saw that, like the Pew Research Center came out with a study recently that said that like 83% of all people want to see legislator work together and solve problems and the Gallup poll again in this year said basically the same kind of thing.

And so, you know, we saw where they can work together.

And what we did is we asked the contributors that to kind of focus on just a few major areas that would be effective leadership and democracy, the importance of networking in developing trust and open communication, key accomplishments, unusual alliances that came together to pass legislation.

And there's some strange ones the Fourth Estate, the media so important Tim, and going back all your few decades and then memorable mentors and friends.

And that's, you know, the focus of the book is really on those things coming together.

Now we think it plays out nationally.

We think and we have already received inquiries from the National Conference of State Legislators, a huge national group of all legislators from all over the country.

And the Council of State Governments have asked about the progress of our website and the book that will be coming out to down the road.

Not to go ahead, Mike.

No, that's right.

We were frankly shocked in a positive way that it took tnat turn.

There are still stories from the capital that is still we've throughout the book.

Very briefly, I'll tell you one, it was from Mike Griffin from down in Jackson.

Mike, very practical Democrat, a very Catholic legislator who wore Catholicism on his sleeve.

And Cardinals Jacque from Detroit was visiting the capital and he's Polish.

He was close to the pope and he introduced himself and said I'm representing Mike Griffin.

And he says, you know, you're the second Polish cardina that I've met in Cardinal Jacque said, Migh I ask who the first was thinking that Griffin had actually met the pope?

And he said, Well the first one was Stan Musial.

The Cardinal was a baseball fan.

And they got a big laugh.

But that was the type of stories we started with.

And we still are reservin a place near the end of the book to include some of those stories.

But the focus now is far mor noble than what we had intended.

All right.

Not to be Debbie Downer here, but let me play the role of journalist.

Okay.

You wrote this book eventually coming out.

And what do we have a target date?

Well, we've already submitted it to a couple of publishers who are looking it over.

So whatever it takes after that right now, do a plug and we'll plug it again.

What is the website?

Somebody out there who wants to go and read these stories, where do they go?

Okay.

The website, which has received over 5000 hit so far, has been not very long.

And it is am I good government dot com all one word migoodgovernment.com.

All righ so the Debbie Downer story here is who out in this current political climate is concerned about good government we think a lot of people are we've just come through an election that was it just then it was negative campaigning at its worst and people I think are fed up with it and throughout the campaign, if there's one central thin we think that the people wanted was don't tell me what you're against, please tell me what you're for.

And that seemed to resonate.

And if there's any guiding principle that we have is we'd like to return to something like that.

Yeah.

Being a lover of history, I can go back to the '60 debates between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

And if you review that, they get their digs in, if you will.

But at the same time, it was focused on issues.

And that's what I mean at that particular debate.

If you recall, it was the Quemoy-Matsu, but it was argument that they had was on issues and we'd love to have them return at least to launch a dialog to see how we could return civilit to this whole political process.

And, you know, as I look at it and I'm saying it was a very negative election and people, we believe, are looking at some problems out there that have to be solved.

And if you had on eac end of the political spectrum, I'm not putting blame on any one party.

It's on both ends of the political spectrum.

We have some serious issues We have to deal with Social Security.

I mean, in ten years, they're going to hav to drastically lower benefits.

You know, it can't continue the way it's going.

People need to sit down on both sides of the aisle and solve this.

And they could do it.

The other one is another one would be immigration.

You know, one you have I think the be pretty much the discussions being done between Repubs and Dems putting together a good immigration bill.

Well, let's do it and the we can work on fine tuning that.

But we need something in place and I think that's what people want to see.

All right.

So everybody talk about the good old days, right?

And the Milliken and Speaker Crim is a good example.

And other governors have tried to replicate that quadrant, getting all the leaders in the room, but where did things start to go sideways.

Why?

When did it stop being We're going to fight it out on the floor and have a drink afterwards.

And now, instead of going and having drink afterwards we go to our separate corners.

What happened?

Any number of things may have happened, and term limits, I think, had a lot to do with it.

Joe Schwartz, who's been a guest on your show a number of times, indicated he said you just don't have the mentors that you used to him when he came in as a as the freshman legislator.

He said we had people like Harry Gast who had been there, was a gentleman in We laugh because Bill Foust, who was Senate majority leader, used to hold, he'd call them canasta games, but they were poker games in his office.

And people jus they socialized with each other.

The intensity of the debate need not suffer, but at least it should be on issues.

And and I think those relationships do that for canasta games are no longer there because people come in, they go to sessio and they go their separate ways.

What's your take.

Well, the same kind of thing.

But I would offer that, you know, right now with term limits, it seems like so much power goes into leadership.

They raise all this money through super PACs and they dole out then the favors and then there are no long standing committee chairs.

Can you imagine?

You know, back when telling committee chair, you have to this is the bill to put out, don't make any amendments.

Well, you know, I look at some of th powerful committee chairs there and we would laugh.

But the point I would like to make, too, is this is not all about old time or that old times were better.

We think this is a template for the future.

We really do.

And you know that where other states can be doing the same thing nationally, look to see where issues can be solved and move i really serious things forward.

And so that whole template thing I think is real important.

But here's the conundrum.

The electorate voted for term limits in large numbers.

Okay?

And as you mentioned earlier, 83% as you did with the Pew report, want good government and people to work together.

There is a disconnect on those two things.

Am I not correct Gentlemen?

You are.

All right.

So you can't have it both ways.

Okay.

This was a we're going to send them a message.

We don't like government and career politician has become a four letter word.

And that's where your problem is.

But on the other hand, solve the problem.

You know, we don't like you can't have it both ways.

I think we're tryin to set up the dialog to at least kind of break through some of that right now.

A lot of the response from the electorate is we don't like politicians, but I like my representative.

Yeah, that's true.

He's a good guy or she's great.

And but overall, I don't care for government or politicians or they're all a bunch of crook or whatever in but I like mine.

Which brings us to the news media.

Are we part of the problem?

Yes.

Yes.

Bluntly, we take on the national scene.

We have Donald Trump a few years ago, when Trump was first entering the limelight.

There was a time when he was in Ohio and John Kasich was giving a speech on how do we save Social Security?

Not far, just a mile or two away was Donald Trump.

And he was using invective.

He was name calling.

And his story is going to appea on the front page because it's a lot more interesting to read than it is to sit down and talk about a real proble as far as Social Security goes.

I'm not here to trash Trump, but at the same time that the media you ask the question, the media is part of the problem because of what they decide to cover an what they decide to celebrate.

Donald Trump hasn't been off the front page for a long time.

And when you're in hi position, you're you're saying, I don't care what it is as long as I'm on the front page.

You know, als you have the whole thing of now with media, it's gone to 24-7 and the the various whether it's CNN or Fox News or MSNBC, see, they come out and have their own 24-7 shows.

So it becomes news as entertainment.

And, you know, people so many people said, where's Walter Cronkite?

Where's the half hour of national news every night?

Then that's what we need.

And then read the newspaper.

But that becomes a problem because they stake out their turf instead of just doing here's this side, here's this side.

You make up your own mind viewer.

Well, some would add to this conversation we need to offer up is another part of the problem is a social media.

Gigantic.

Yeah.

You know, if it's you guys against social media, I'm going to bet on them.

Unfortunately.

Yeah.

Am I right?

You get more and more playing time.

There is no doubt.

Can social and some of these social media sites and I'm talking about the extreme sites that will they really be able to answer many of these heavy duty social problems that we have you know can that far out group amend Social Security?

So we have a system in plac in 70 years and I would say, no, let's let's get going.

It's a team sport and let's solve some issues.

Is this too simplistic here?

But is an informed an electorate the way that you get where you gentlemen want to go?

Yes.

Yes.

So people are making decisions based on the substance of an issue and not the personality.

I think we have to add to the equation the death of the daily newspaper or as well.

You know, I don't know how many times growing up or whatever they say, hey, did it did you read McDermott this morning or Mike Royko or whatever in major cities?

I recall reading where something dealing with President Eisenhower and he says, I'll wait to see what Reston has to say about this.

Scottie Reston from The New York Times.

And I think that the news now is two minute clips on the evening news as opposed to sitting down and reading some in-depth in the newspaper.

The way it used to be is that you would watch the TV news to find out what the news was, and then you went to the newspaper to find out what the news really was.

And there's a huge difference.

You know, the average newscast you know, 90 seconds for a story to explain what's going on in the state capitol.

Lots of luck.

Okay.

You know, it's it's just really tough to do.

A cup of coffee in the newspaper in the morning.

Rod McKuen said that's that's love is a cup of coffee and the Sunday news.

There's somebody who's 27 years old.

Yeah.

It's not where they get their news, obviously, anymore.

I don't have a real good answer for that.

If you has a silver bullet we'd have seen it already.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's that's one of the barriers we are trying to addres and maybe put some cracks in it and say if we're going to solve the issues, you can't just be extrapolating some of these argument out there and then doing nothing becaus that isn't going to get it done.

So there has to be political benefit to it to getting along with the other side.

Perhaps it's coming home reporting on the weekends to your constituents with a pocket ful of bipartisan accomplishments.

Back in the shared power agreement, people were doing that in the media.

The local newspapers were heralding man.

But those local papers aren't there, or they're publishing tw or three times a week now.

And it was not.

It's interesting when they determined that there was goin to be a shared power agreement that what Paul Hilligonds and Curtis Hertel put together was nothing short of sheer genius.

The genius is found in the simplicity of it, where the speaker would have the gavel for a month and during that time the other party would be chairing the committees.

It's just that simple and it worked.

It genuinely worked.

In reading Dan Loeps article in there, he said not only were its agenda being set by the committee chair, but it was in consultation with the majority and the minority party for that particular month.

You know, also as we looked where the situation is right now, I really believe that legislators both at the national level and the state level, have to hear from their constituents.

What have you done on a certain key issue and starting at the grassroots and building up.

And that's when they'll see, geez, maybe we have to do something on the budget deficit, you know, to get it done.

And our examples of how it can get done are, again, geared to the future as to how it should get done right now, Do the final plug for the website.

My what is it?

My my good government.

Mi good government as in MI from Michigan.

But again, it's a national effort on our part and it's migoodgovernment.com And you will see all kinds of stories in there from the leaders and the way we go gentlemen, thank you.

It's good to see both of you.

Thanks, Tim.

Thanks to you there.

Okay.

Thanks for watching, folks.

More of off the record regular format next week right here.

See you them.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.