A lawmaker for the millennium.

• Author: Weeks, George
• Position: Michigan Republican Representative Bill Bryant

How a veteran Republican leader has combined quantum physics and the human spirit in a call for a new, radical and peacefully revolutionary politics.

This we know: All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

"He was right, you know," Representative Bill Bryant of Michigan said in reflecting on the oft-quoted words of the famous 19th-century leader of the Suquamish. "We do live in a connected world."

Bryant, a leader turned maverick, has of late done a good deal of reflecting and writing about the web of life, especially as it is affected by politics.

A New Book

Former House Republican Leader William R. Bryant Jr., is author of Quantum Politics: Greening State Legislatures for the New Millennium (New Issues Press of Western Michigan University), a book that he describes as "a call to a greater consciousness and wiser action, in community. It seeks to offer a framework for a politics of rapid evolutionary change, of transformation."

Quantum Politics is not exactly a clarion call in the sense of a trumpet that rings clear. It is a challenging, sometimes mystical read. Not something to skim. But much to ponder.

Bryant's book has such cosmic chapter titles as "Transformational Change," "Accessing Depth Perspectives," "Expanding the Horizontal Realm" and "The Vertical Dimension." But he also offers down-to-earth advice on such important aspects as skill-building among legislators.

Any lawmaker anywhere can identify with the roles and niches Bryant discusses in his "Member to Member" chapter, and the qualities and traps in "Leadership."

Think Universe

Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill was fond of saying that all politics is local. Author Bryant, 55, a 22-year veteran of the Michigan House, advances a much broader concept of "community." To Bryant, all politics is universal, or should be. Don't think just local. Think universe.

"The use of the word "quantum" in the title is in direct reference to quantum physics," says Bryant, Michigan Republican leader emeritus and dean of the House GOP. "Modern physics gives us the sense that, beneath surface-level distinctness and separateness, everything in the universe is interconnected and interrelated with everything else. Science tells us that, as do religion and mysticism. We need to act based on such knowledge."

Why focus on state legislatures?

Says Bryant: "First, because the legislature is the world in which I have worked for 22 years. Second, and more important, because the legislature is a worthy laboratory. A state is a minibioregion. It is small enough to be governable and to tolerate experiment while remaining cohesive, but not so small as to lack the depth and breadth of resources that inhibit many units of government. Further, a state is not distracted by such national preoccupations as deficits and defense. A state, then, is a logical place to make substantial progress in problem solving and in processes of governance."

Bryant, in a picnic table interview at the Straits of Mackinac where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet, disputed the suggestion that the political world will have trouble with his approach because, for many, "local politics and party politics are about as far as the vision goes."

A Connected World

"I think there is more and more of an understanding of the overall concept that we do live in a very connected world," he responded. "Things like oil crises, if nothing else, have taught us that. Yet there is an increasing understanding that action needs to be local. Maybe it's the environmental movement that has taught us that - that it is each individual and each community and each business that are ultimately going to make the difference in trying to keep from worsening, and hopefully to improve, the environment.

"So I don't think it is radical to tell people that they need to be taking a broader view, a longer-range view, a view that is more oriented to community - with no less of a concern for the individual, but a balanced view that we are individuals within a community, and that none of us can survive very well without community."

Part of the problem, he said, is that "we don't want to admit that we are in crisis. We really are in a lot of ways - environmentally, economically and because our sense of commonality of values does not seem to be as great."

In Quantum Politics, Bryant notes that some in the environmental movement use the term "deep ecology," which he said "is more than ecological concern. It is a recognition of the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of all aspects of life and environment, all of creation.

"... It really means we aren't going to do what needs to be done ... without deep changes in our world view and our values. I guess that is a lot of what Quantum Politics is about, too."

Is the political system up to saving a living earth? Can politicians step back and consider the web of life when they are so bound in webs of partisan politics?

"Sure," Bryant says, noting that the founding fathers provided for a government that recognizes that while people are fallible, "they are not through and through rotten, and they can basically be trusted with some considerable amount of self government, especially if they are not granted un-checked power."

Bryant once had considerable power in the Michigan Legislature, especially when he was Republican floor leader and then leader during the last half of the 14-year reign of GOP Governor William G. Milliken, Michigan's longest-serving governor. Democrats controlled the House, but much of the agenda and eventual action of the Legislature stemmed from Milliken's frequent meetings with the "quadrant" - the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate.

With Michigan reeling from the effects of back-to-back national recessions and the Legislature repeatedly being called upon to approve budget cuts, Bryant became immersed in bipartisan crisis management.

After giving up his leadership post, Bryant, an honors graduate of Princeton University with a law degree from the University of Michigan, was named "Outstanding Legislator of the Year" by the National Republican Legislators' Association in 1984. The GOP caucus also gave him the "emeritus" designation.

Bucking the Establishment

Outstanding. Leader emeritus. But not mainstream. Not lockstep. Bryant's 1990s march to a different drum is reflected not only in such cerebral pursuits as Quantum Politics but also his bucking of the GOP establishment on the hottest issue in Michigan politics - cutting property taxes as a means of financing school operations.

Republican Governor John Engler had most of the Legislature with him in a bipartisan effort behind the defeated June 2 Proposal A ballot plan to cut property taxes, raise the sales tax from 4 percent to 6 percent and reform school finance. Bryant was one of the few Republican voices speaking out against it. He issued "33 reasons to vote against Proposal A" - and later proclaimed, "Now we're up to 50 reasons." A number of factors, including distrust of government, led to the proposal's defeat.

Bryant, co-chair of the House Education Committee, said the proposal was unfair to renters, seniors and others - including wealthy school districts like those in the Grosse Pointe area he represents.

In helping defeat Proposal A, Bryant went into the trenches, appearing at debates and on talk shows. In Quantum Politics, Bryant goes for the deepest depths of the mind, saying "we need to expand our mind menu, our normal, accessible, usable states of consciousness, vertically and horizontally."

The book explains that we can gain wholly new ideas...