All living former Michigan executives teamed up to discuss civility with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy Wednesday. Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm remotely joined former Govs. Rick Snyder, James Blanchard and John Engler at the Lansing Hilton DoubleTree to demonstrate the value of communicating clearly, respectfully, and truthfully in a hotly contested political environment.

Roop Raj, Fox 2 Detroit anchorman and host, moderated the bipartisan meeting, which came amid wide public concerns over censorship, cancellations, and doxxing, as well as both unsuccessful and successful assassination attempts on politicians, activists, podcasters and reporters.

“I am eager to soothe my own raging beast by having a civil conversation with three governors who know the importance of respect and bipartisanship even as we may disagree about the president,” Granholm, a Democrat, said to a panel that included fellow Democrat Blanchard and Republicans Snyder and Engler.

The four governors took turns making statements before turning to questions from Raj. Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman closed the event with an observation about his own recently departed father.

“Mainly what people will remember about my dad is how he made them feel,” Lehman said. “And that wasn’t because Dad was some towering exemplar of charisma. We remember how people make us feel because of the way we're built... It’s fair to say that my dad was civil in ordinary ways, that he was fair, generous. He let bygones be bygones. He acted as if everyone he dealt with was somebody whose help he would probably need in the future... If we want to get better as a society, if we want to live in relative peace with one another, if we want to acknowledge one another’s basic human dignity, we need the kind of social progress free speech and civility promote.”

The event was organized by the Michigan Civility Coalition, a group that includes Michiganders for Civic Resilience, the Oakland University Center for Civic Engagement, the Democracy Defense Project, and the Mackinac Center. In another nod to bipartisan control of government, the event received support from the Carter Center and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, organizations named for two presidents who waged a bitter campaign in the 1976 election, which took place in the wake of the toppling of the historically popular Nixon administration in the Watergate affair.

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