When I saw and read the obituary this past week for former State Rep. Bob Bender of Middleville, some interesting memories and revelations came flooding back.
Bob Bender was a member of the Michigan State Legislature from 1983 to 1995. He left Lansing because he had to, because the term limits law kicked in for him.
Strangely, after stepping down as a legislator, he went to the former Soviet Union to provide his expertise on agriculture to Russians and occasionally he would send me columns about what he was seeing and hearing. It was Bender who correctly noted that too many Russians didn’t know how to handle their new found freedoms and they suffered economically as a result.
I found Bender to be a pretty decent man, but even he played a nasty political game of “Democrats bad, Republicans good.” Yet today he would be regarded by Trump. Vance and Ranger Rick as a Republican in Name Only (RINO).
It was Bender who gave me an eye-opening experience about how politicians seek to gain free publicity rather than perform good works to help people.
I was told by the director of the Barry County March of Dimes campaign that Bender was invited to say a few words and well wishes for a Saturday morning march the group was doing.
Bender’s first response to the invitation was “Will be the media be there?” She told him the editor of the Banner and Reminder would be there to take a picture and perhaps do a brief writeup.
So Bender showed up on a Saturday morning at a park for the opening ceremony, said a few kind words about the work of the March of Dimes and then sent the marchers on their way.
As soon as the marchers were gone from the starting location, Bender climbed into his car and took off, wearing a big smile.
I confess that I cropped him out of the pictures I took, realizing this sham is how politicians get elected again and again.
Another aspect of Mr. Bender’s public service was his constant reminder to voters that “whenever you listen to (former Gov.) Jim Blanchard, you’d better hang on to your wallet.”
Yet I insisted that anytime you hear anyone speak these days or watch television or listen to the radio, you’d better hang on to your wallet. Virtually everything you see and hear in the public arena is marketing and public relations. All claims about public service and the public good are just bullshit.
But it matters not in a society plagued by a one-party system that shows absolutely no sign of changing.
I’ll never forget a congressional candidate debate that was planned in Hastings in October 1992, pitting incumbent Republican Paul Henry, yet another good guy, against Democratic challenger Carol Kooistra. Henry was a no-show and Kooistra told the audience that she believed the incumbent congressman was seriously ill. Indeed, that night he was rushed to Butterworth Hospital where it was learned Henry was suffering from brain cancer. Doctors gave him only a 4 percent chance of living as much as a year.
It didn’t matter for the upcoming election. A couple of weeks later Henry was elected again in a landslide, showing West Michigan voters preferring a dying man over his opponent, whom Henry himself praised as “a class act.”
Henry died on July 31, 1993, after only showing up in Washington once to be sworn in on Jan. 1.
It gave credence to my long-standing opinion that “If A. Hitler ran as a Republican against Democrat J. Christ, A. Hitler would win.”
My opinion stands.
