Bray on Engler
Thomas Bray is one of my favorite columnists, and he has another well-considered one today on our outgoing Governor: "Engler: He didn't have to be liked". Key selections, significant in the particular context of the New Federalism I have recently discussed:
Rare among politicians, Engler has been willing to spend his political capital almost as quickly as he amassed it. One result was consistently high negatives in the polls. Engler was never loved.
But another result has been a record of accomplishment that is the envy of governors everywhere: leadership in welfare reform, a drastic overhaul of school finances, large tax cuts, a state Supreme Court that has replaced California as a fount of legal influence, and spending increases that have totaled about half the rate for states nationally, to name a few.
Thus Engler ultimately became one of America's most consequential governors at a time when, following the Cold War, states themselves were becoming more important.
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Engler was also rare among politicians in understanding the importance of ideas. He was a pragmatist, but his pragmatism was always in service to a broader vision. I enjoyed many long dinners with him in the 1980s discussing practical politics -- but also ideas of limited government, personal responsibility and what his friend and philosophical mentor, Russell Kirk, liked to call (with credit to Edmund Burke), the "little platoons" of society: family, church, neighborhood, school, community.
Engler's Supreme Court deserves particular mention. He took office on January 1, 1991 and went six years before he had a chance to appoint a single Justice to the notoriously liberal Michigan Supreme Court. It was in January 1997 that he named Clifford Taylor, his first appointment to that Court. In 1998, Maura Corrigan was elected to an open seat on the Court, taking office in January 1999. In that year, eight years after taking office, Engler was able to appoint Robert Young (January 1999) and Stephen Markman (October 1999) to the the Court. Within the space of ten months, a 4-3 liberal Court became the 5-2 conservative Court which currently sits, and which will long be regarded as Engler's Court.
Good things, it is said, come to him who waits.
11:23:59 PM 
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