Talk Back: Universal agreement is easy. No it’s not.
Quick. What would everyone move heaven and earth to avoid doing? Besides that thing at the doctor’s office nobody wants to talk about. Grocery shopping, right? What a pain. Take what happened last week. Getting the one item we needed, we figured, would take only a couple minutes. So we parked in the quick visit space and headed for the fruit aisle where it was always front and center.
Only to find there wasn’t any.
Must have been a run on it, we thought. But there was no empty spot. No “sorry we’re out” label. Instead, it was like they didn’t make the stuff anymore. In a panic, we scoured the entire store. Was it in the meat bin? Nope. With the detergent and dryer sheets? Struck out again. Amongst the baked goods, dogfood, or toothpaste? Zip, zilch, nada. And oh did we ever feel foolish when we finally found it — about a month later — in the most obvious place of all. Right next to the cereal. Which should have been no surprise. Because if there’s one thing even Trump touters and Biden backers can agree on, it’s this.
Everybody puts applesauce on their Wheaties.
Ah, but there’s always an exception. And in Michigan, it’s those guys and gals who hang out under the Dome in Lansing. Once upon a time, despite their political differences, those on one side of the aisle actually used to get along and find common ground with those on the other. Even back in 1849, after the Zachary Taylor faction decided to boot favorite son Sen. Lewis Cass’s mother out of the Mamas and the Papas, they managed to come to agreement on higher education. Michigan, they decided, was the perfect spot for the first normal college west of the Appalachian Mountains. Because all the abnormal ones were causing kids to flee to Chicago.
And contributing to the state’s population decline.
But today, there’s virtually no agreement on anything in Lansing. If one side says the sky is blue, the other insists it’s red. If the Democrats say it’s time for supper, the Republicans go on a hunger strike. And vice versa. Don’t believe us? Consider this. From January 1st until sine die adjournment a month ago, there were 586 roll call votes in the House. Only 19 of them were unanimous.
Or to put it another way, just one-third of 1 percent.
It wasn’t always like that. Between 2001 and 2022, the House recorded roughly 285 unanimous votes annually. And in 2002, there was universal agreement nearly 700 times. But today, the gulf between Republicans and Democrats is wider than the Pacific Ocean. About the only thing they can agree on is that every state highway should be renamed in honor of a veteran or somebody in law enforcement. In fact, you’d have to go back to the days when Millard Fillmore — he’s the guy no one remembers — was in the White House to find fewer examples of unanimity among those in Michigan’s lower chamber.
That’s not to say everything should be a “here we go ‘round the mulberry bush” lovefest. But the odds of getting every lawmaker today on the same page are about the same as your doctor telling you to eat more sugar. Fortunately, we have the solution. One that even the half dozen charter members of the Mikey Caucus — they hate everything — are powerless to resist. All it takes is a little Wagner. Just three notes from “Flight of the Valkyries” and they’ll instantly be singing in unison.
“Kill the wabbit; kill the wabbit!”
See? You’re doing it, too!
— Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time at localbuzzradio.com, Facebook Live and dougspade.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Talk Back: Universal agreement is easy. No it’s not.
