I never really expected presidential buzz to surround our governor, mainly because he isn't the kind of guy who got into politics with the primary objective of advancing personal political ambitions. Rick Snyder ran for governor in 2010 - a complete political novice - touting himself as "one tough nerd" in contrast to the politicians who took up space in Lansing at the time, and seemed (because they were) incapable of simple tasks like creating a budget.
State government in Michigan circa 2010 was a constant leap from one crisis to the next. Jennifer Granholm, Rob's favorite Dating Game contestant, had been governor since 2003 and had proven completely inept at virtually every phase of governing. She couldn't budget, she couldn't manage, she could make decisions, she couldn't form intelligible policy. She couldn't do anything.
Fortunately for everyone concerned, Granholm was term-limited and could not run again in 2010. That opened the door for a lot of typical Michigan Republicans, by which I mean people who ask political consultants what they should say to get elected but don't really have much of a plan of action if and when they get there. Very much outside this field was Rick Snyder, the former CEO of Gateway Computers, who ran a very unconventional campaign. He didn't even participate in debates between Republican candidates, deeming them a waste of his and everyone else's time - which they absolutely are.
Long story short, Snyder's approach worked, and he emerged from a five-way Republican primary field as enough people liked the idea of the tough nerd as an alternative to the usual politicians. Then he breezed to a huge victory in November over"America's angriest mayor," Lansing's Virg Bernero, and he became our unlikely new governor.
Once in office, Snyder did what a lot of us expected him to do, which is that he ran state government like a CEO. He completely upended the budgeting process - not only putting together balanced budgets months ahead of time, but actually developing balanced budgets two years down the road as well. These days it seems hard to believe that Michigan once sweated the budgeting process. It's now a non-event with no drama whatsoever.
One of Snyder's first initiatves was to get rid of gobs of regulations that caused Michigan to have a historically poor business environment. He charged his team with this task in a very short time frame, and when they came back and gave him the recommendations he was looking for, he eliminated them on his own where he had the authority, and went to the Republican-controlled Legislature to get rid of the rest.
Another action Snyder took right away was to get rid of the hated and very complicated Michigan Business Tax, replacing it with a simple, flat 6 percent corporate tax. He made other tax moves that were controversial, including the elimination of the exemption pension incomes had enjoyed from the state's income tax. Democrats tried to beat him up for this, saying he had created a "pension tax," when in fact he had eliminated an exemption to an existing tax. But the whole point was not to put the tax burden so heavily on producers and job creators, while others who were doing no work were exempt.
Now at this point, Snyder might be sounding to you like a strong ideological conservative. In fact, he is a manager and a problem solver. If the problem is fixing the roads and the solution is raising the gas tax, Snyder's bias is solving the problem. If Snyder thinks people will be better off on balance with an expansion of Medicaid, then he'll expand it even though it's part of ObamaCare.
Snyder does not going around looking for fights with the left, which is why it wasn't a major item on his agenda to pass right-to-work. He did so only after the UAW picked a fight by trying to pass a ballot initiative that would have enshrined big labor's entire agenda in the state constitution. When that failed, the Republican Legislature basically retaliated by passing right-to-work in a lame-duck session, and Snyder signed it because at that point it was the right policy move.
He supports Common Core because he buys the basic concept that it better prepares students for college and careers, and because it keeps us in good standing with the federal government. The parts of Common Core that trouble conservatives don't really keep Snyder up at night because he is Mr. Problem Solver, not Mr. Conservative.
His biggest problem-solving triumph, by far, was also his riskiest - the rescue of Detroit from fiscal calamity via a bankruptcy process that Detroit's own leaders would never have initiated, but which Snyder did after engineering a hostile takeover of the city's finances by the state. Under an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, Detroit went through the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy and now emerges with its fiscal decks cleared and a real chance at success.
This is the triumph that is now earning Snyder presidential talk, and the fact that he is now talking about "telling Michigan's story to the rest of the country" suggests to me that he's at least thinking about it. I personally will be shocked if he actually runs because he just doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who really wants to go through the insanity. But the fact that his name is being thrown out there has conservatives wondering if he's "one of us" or if he's a RINO/liberal/moderate squish.
Here's the answer: He's neither.
Snyder is not ideological at all. He is a fact-based, data-based leader who will always do the thing that he thinks solves the problem. Now the clear solution to any problem is usually the one conservatives will choose, so most of the time Snyder will do things conservatives like. But sometimes he thinks the clearer, straighter path to the solution - at least as he defines the solution - is something else, and those are the times when conservatives find him infuriating.
I offer this neither as an endorsement nor as a criticism. I simply want you to know our governor as he really is, in the unlikely event he actually becomes a player on the presidential stage. Michigan is far better off for having had him in office these past four years, and I'm glad we didn't throw him over for Democrat labor union stooge Mark Schauer (relieved, too, as the race was much closer than it should have been). I honestly have never given much thought to whether he would make a good president, and I'm not even really thinking about it now because the whole idea seems kind of absurd to me.
But now you know who he is. Do what it what you will.
