Today’s installment begins with a warm memory, because it takes one back to a high school college English teacher named Ed O’Rourke. He was an Ichabod Crane-type instructor and others ignorantly laughed about him behind his back. But make no mistake, this guy was brilliant and he was on a mission to take a group of un-scrubbed Macomb County kids and turn them into accomplished writers. One of his favorite assignments was to compose a compare-and-contrast essay on, say for example, Beolwulf vs. Hamlet.

And here’s where the memory comes in because we’re about to apply what Mr. O-Rourke taught. What you are about to read is–what else– but a compare and contrast with two GOP lawmakers and their diametrically opposed attitudes about politics.

Iron Mountain’s favorite son is Rep. Beau LaFave. There is nothing subtle about the way he plays the game, which is to take no hostages, tell it like it is (even when it isn’t) and shoot from the hip every chance you get. For those reasons alone, Mr. LaFave is a fav with the capitol press corps in that he is always making news; he’s always over the top and he never has anything good to say about his two major foils: namely Attorney General Dana Nessel and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Whatever they do, he finds fault with.

On top of that, he is magical when it comes to his ad libbed one-liners. During a recent debate about placing warning labels on this or that to protect the citizens, during an interview he looked the pushy reporter in the eye and noted, “under this legislation, we’d have to put a warning label on you!”

Compare that to Rep. Matt Hall, a rather unassuming chap from tiny Emmet Township now in his first term. He was an intern in the House and worked for the state attorney general and on the ill-fated campaign of Terri Lynn Land for governor. Both he and Mr. LaFave are lawyers, but that’s about where the comparison stuff ends.

You see, Rep. Hall has figured out that tossing bombs may be tempting but at the end of the day, if you want to achieve anything in the legislative process he thinks a different approach is required.

Take the current flap over the Whitmer administration’s handling of COVID-19 in Michigan nursing homes where 30% or so of the virus deaths in this state have been recorded. The governor has conceded knowing what she knows now, she would have done some things differently.

But Mr. Hall, who chairs the House Oversight committee, is not content with accepting that. He’s doing a deeper dive into what the governor knew and when she knew it. To be sure, he is looking to hold her accountable but also has a longer view of correcting the miscues so when and if the next surge hits, the nursing home deaths can be reduced.

In that light he announced two weeks ago that he wanted the governor’s office to share with the committee, its communications with all the virus stakeholders. Governors are notoriously antsy about such requests. Ask former Gov. Rick Snyder, who was not too pleased when forced to share his internal communications on the Flint lead-in-the-water mess.

When announcing his request, Mr. Hall included the line that the committee had subpoena power. It was not meant as a threat, but just a reminder that he could use that rare authority to get what he wanted if the front office stiffed him.

After seven days, the governor wrote back. She was directing one of her department heads to “respond” to the request. Notice she did not say that response would include the information Mr. Hall sought. Not even close. A “response” could be, “Take a hike, we need more time”, or “Let’s talk to work this out.”

Had Rep. LaFave been in charge, he might have taken that as a delaying tactic designed to run the clock as governors have been known to do to avoid an ugly confrontation and he could have responded by sending the subpoena post haste.

Rep. Hall on the other hand told reporters before he received the memo that, “the next step is going to be we’re going to have a conversation to talk it through with the governor’s office. My preference is to work together. I want to get answers from them that is not hostile (but) I do have the power to issue a subpoena if I need to.”

Simultaneously Mr. Hall’s committee is also trying to figure out what went wrong in the unemployment system, where he says some citizens are waiting 10-12 weeks and still don’t have their first check.

Rep. LaFave might call for the head of the director yesterday.

In contrast, Mr. Hall concludes, “changing directors right now…I think would probably make it worse.”

The compare and contrast is striking and it’s up to you to decide which one is best.

One final thought: If you feel what you just read was worth the time and you didn’t dose off half way through, the guy to thank for that is Mr. O’Rourke.