We pause in our thrilling episode of trying to write the new $80 billion state budget before a self-imposed June 30 deadline, to dive into a topic that seldom gets any media attention because who really cares about the personal family sacrifices made by elected officeholders?
Well if you have any degree of empathy inside, you should be concerned because those sacrifi ces are real and indirectly they could impact the quality of servitude you receive from these office holders.
Shortly after she left her eight years as governor, private citizen Jennifer Granholm confided that she regretted all the times she had to tend to her stately duties when she desperately wanted to be at the side of either or her two daughters or one son. She lost count of those wanna-be -with- you moments, but you could tell she still ached inside that she had to make the choice.
Former Gov. Bill Milliken lamented in his book that sending his son and daughter off to out-of-state boarding schools so that he could attend to his state duties, left him sorrowful and deeply regretting that he did that. You sense, given a re-do of that decision, he would have kept them at home.
Now comes son of Bill Schuette with his personal experience with a dad who ran for just about every office in the state and if there was a Michigan dog-catcher he probably would have sought that, too in addition to wanting to be governor.
Asked on the eve of Father’s Day to share some aspect of his dad that the general public did not know about, suddenly his accelerated fast-paced answers that he fired back at a panel of four capitol correspondents during his maiden voyage on the “Off the Record” Public TV series, suddenly that slowed to a crawl as he pondered the unexpected and poignant inquiry.
With perhaps hundreds of real life examples whirling around in his head, he landed on this.
“Hum. Every single day, it didn’t matter if he was, you know, having to get up and come do Off the Record in the morning, or attend a meeting and get home late from a Lincoln Day.” (Those were GOP fund raisers named after the former president in which Mr. Schuette senior would circle each table offering to pour coffee to anyone who needed a refill. It was a great gambit to meet and greet would be supporters and vintage Bill Schuette.)
But back to the son’s reflections.
In the morning at home, “he would wake me up for football work outs or practice and he would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sometimes the ratios (of the two ingredients) were off depending on how much sleep he had gotten.”
And then this nugget. “Politics is a hard job to be present in your children’s life and Dad made sure he put in the time to do it.”
His appearance on the broadcast was sort of the fulfillment of the circle of life as the 29 year old freshman house member recounts that on Saturday mornings when “most kids were watching cartoons, we’d watch ‘Off the Record,’ so it’s a good opportunity to be here tonight,” he smiled.
Oh yes. Just one more thing from the head of the Schuette family who shared his advice to his offspring before heading out the door for East Lansing to do the broadcast.
Dad told his kid, “make sure you don’t let TS push you around too much!”
Not only a great line that brought laughter to those in the studio, but it was great advice as well.
