Fritz Benson has a plan for bipartisan civility, drawn from a career in Michigan governance ranging from service at the state Supreme Court to partnership in a multi-client lobbying firm. Benson, editor and co-author of “Across the Aisle: Bringing Civility & Bipartisanship Back to Politics,” joins the Overton Window Podcast to discuss how local, state, and federal politicians could be incentivized to put aside partisan point-scoring and solve real public problems.

“The Pew Research Center, which is a very highly regarded research center, said in a recent study that 83% of all citizens, registered voters, think that elected officials should work together and actually pass good legislation,” Benson says. “And I think really the election on Tuesday showed maybe that that’s what a lot of people wanted. Maybe they voted the way they voted because they don’t want to see this huge division, where people just draw a line in the sand and throw bricks at one another. That isn’t what they want. Solve some issues, whether it’s on Social Security or on affordability or on you name it.”

Michigan’s negotiations over unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation in the 1980s provides a useful lesson for today, according to Benson.

“That was a last-person-out-of-the-state-turn-off-the-lights type of thing,” he says, “because businesses were legitimately very upset. Labor unions were very strong and they weren't satisfied with how the system was working. It was a bad system. So I think what you learn from both of these very seminal issues is you can get people in the same room, you know, symbolically, actually wanting to solve the problems. And yes: You gotta give a little here, somebody’s gotta give a little bit there. But if this is going to help Michigan businesses, it’s gonna help the workers, and overall it’s gonna help the prosperity of the state. That’s more important than scoring political points on either end of the spectrum. I blame both sides when they’re so strident on either end that they aren’t thinking about what’s best for the citizens of Michigan.”

Another area where Michigan politicians found common ground involved end-of-life decisions.

“On one side,” Benson says, “you had [late 57th District Rep.] Dave Hollister, a very liberal Democrat, with Planned Parenthood and other liberal groups on his side, whose grandfather said, ‘I don’t want to be kept alive just with machines and everything when it’s my time to go.’ And this is right during the time of Jack Kevorkian and assisted suicides. As you know, Dr. Kevorkian practiced in Oakland County. It was a huge national issue, but it centered here in Michigan. And on the other side was Rep. Fred Dillingham, a conservative Republican from over in Livingston County, and his two main negotiators on his side: the Michigan Catholic Conference and Right to Life. They’re in a room trying to hash out what became durable power of attorney legislation. That led to the hospice legislation, where Michigan has some of the best hospice legislation in the country.”

Former Gov. James Blanchard, a contributor to “Across the Aisle,” faced a punishing backlash after passing a controversial tax hike during a fiscal crisis. But Benson notes that he ultimately won re-election, demonstrating that politicians can survive unpopular decisions. The crucial element is keeping constituents’ interests in mind.

“You can go back to certain issues where they listened to constituents,” says Benson. “One was mandatory catastrophic claims in auto insurance, where you had this Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association. We’re the only state that has mandatory catastrophic claims so that if you’re in an auto accident and you’re seriously injured or you’re bedridden, your auto insurance picks that up. Well, it was getting to be very expensive. And so, just a very few years ago, they came back and revisited that after it had been in effect for several decades. Came back and revisited it and said, all right, some people don’t want it, don’t think they need that kind of coverage. And so now you have a check on your car insurance anywhere from one to five, with different levels of coverage going down, so one is cheaper.”

Listen to the full conversation on The Overton Window Podcast.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.