My Comments: While I don’t worry about how folks around the world see the United States, I do find it interesting to read their observations from time to time. I grew up and was overseas when the phrase “ugly Amercian” gained popularity. It diminished over time until the Bush years when we attempted to impose our way of life on those who hadn’t a clue about how to make it work, and still don’t.

So here is something from the Financial Times that reflects some of my personal feelings about politics in this country. I think it’s critical for us to have a viable two party system. I really don’t want to see us ruled by the Democrats indefinitely. But unless and until the Republicans return to some degree of sanity, I’m concerned that they will fade into the background.

By Edward Luce for the Financial Times, May 5, 2013

Not so long ago Republicans tried to follow Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” Nowadays, trashing other Republicans is a way to get ahead. Rising Tea Party stars, such as Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, who last week dismissed his Senate Republican colleagues as “squishes”, make a virtue of incivility. The ruder he is, the more the base loves it. His sport is hunting RINOs – Republicans in Name Only. Every gain for Mr Cruz is a nail in the coffin of his party’s national prospects.

Then there is Rick Snyder, the Republican governor of Michigan. Cheesy as it sounds, Mr Snyder’s mantra is “relentless positive action” – or RPA, as Michiganders call it. Mr Snyder even extends Mr Reagan’s commandment to Democrats. Few governors have pushed through as much change as Mr Snyder in two years, including some very tough reforms (stripping unions of organising rights, for example). Yet it is hard to find a Democrat with a bad word to say about him. “Civility is my response to the fact that America’s political culture is broken,” Mr Snyder told me in a relentlessly cheerful interview in his office in Lansing. “My approach is no blame, no credit.”

It will take more than folksy charm to revive Mr Snyder’s party at the federal level (and possibly his own re-election prospects in Michigan, which have nosedived since he pushed the “right to work” law). But the party will stand little chance of making a national comeback in 2016 or beyond if it rewards Mr Cruz’s brand of politics. In this civil war between Republican arsonists and architects, ideology is not the real divide. It is about whether the party can recapture a purpose in governing – as it has in many state capitols – or whether it will retreat into its own Alamo as a regional party of the south.

Mr Snyder’s approach is pragmatic. In contrast to Mitt Romney, a son of Michigan, Mr Snyder embraced the bailout of General Motors as necessary to the state’s revival. He also pledged to accept federal money from President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, which expands Medicaid to those without insurance. To Republican diehards, this is tantamount to apostasy – the party plans to campaign hard in the 2014 Congressional elections on a platform of repealing the law. Other Republican governors, including Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas, have rejected the cash. Mr Snyder believes gesture politics is a luxury Michigan cannot afford. “I don’t call it ‘Obamacare’, I call it the Affordable Care Act,” he says. “I don’t fight with the federal government because we have a common customer: the people of Michigan.”

A former venture capitalist, Mr Snyder is adept at tapping Washington’s resources for Michigan’s purposes. Unlike his Republican predecessors, who ignored Detroit, America’s most blighted urban landscape, he has thrown his energy into its revival. In March, he appointed an emergency manager to turn the city’s finances around. Kevyn Orr, the African-American bankruptcy lawyer entrusted with the task, has about 18 months to return Detroit to solvency.
In September, ground will be broken on an urban light rail project that will link downtown and midtown Detroit.

Few miss the irony of a Republican governor hoping to revive Motown with street cars. In December he pushed through a regional transit authority linking Detroit to its suburbs. Mr Snyder had just as much difficulty winning over sceptical Republicans from Detroit’s lily-white environs as he had from the Democratic city machine. It was the 26th attempt in the past 40 years. Mr Obama’s department of transportation is a partner. “Snyder is one of the governors who most gets the economic importance of the city,” says Bruce Katz, head of the Metropolitan Centre at the Brookings Institution. “Without Detroit, Michigan cannot recover.”

Whether you call it pragmatic conservatism or simply governing, Mr Snyder’s approach offers a viable future for his party. He has scrapped Michigan’s loophole-riddled corporate tax and replaced it with a simple business tax. He is pushing employers to help train workers in the skills of the future. And he prefers “economic gardening” to “economic hunting” – offering tax breaks to lure outside investors. Of these the most egregious is the Michigan film tax, which pays 43 cents for every dollar Hollywood spends in the state. Democrats oppose much of Mr Snyder’s agenda. So do many fellow Republicans, who control Michigan’s legislature. Yet in two years, Mr Snyder’s sunny earnestness has helped put the state back on the map. Last year it was the ninth-fastest growing state in terms of income per head. And it posted a budget surplus.

If Mr Snyder comes from the Reagan wing of the party, Mr Cruz reaches back to Joe McCarthy. At a hearing in February for Chuck Hagel as defence secretary, Mr Cruz said Iran was celebrating Mr Hagel’s nomination. Mr Cruz then proceeded to hector the decorated Vietnam veteran on patriotic values.

In a galaxy far, far away, here was Mr Snyder: “There have been several instances in Michigan recently where the rules of respect and civility have been ignored,” the governor said on Friday. “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”

Being constructive may not set the base on fire. But most voters like it.