Whatever you thought of Barack Obama before his Philadelphia speech on race, you’ve probably changed your mind at least somewhat.

I’ve interviewed a lot of politicians, from county commissioners to senators, from township clerks to governors. I’ve heard a lot of speeches.

One of the rarest commodities - even among the very best public servants - is courage.

I don’t mean the courage to sling mud at your opponents, or to lambast the media. There’s lots of that kind of courage in politics.

I mean the courage to really say what you believe, even if it’s not popular. The courage to take a stand on a tough issue that people really don’t want to talk about, even if it means alienating voters on both sides.

Obama’s speech was elegantly written and delivered. That’s what we would expect. That’s what got him this far.

What was unexpected was the candor, the honesty, the willingness to say things that both radical blacks and middle class whites didn’t want to hear. There still is racism in this country. But it’s an amazing country that has made incredible progress in civil rights, and that can make even more progress if we work harder at it. Both points are true.

Obama undoubtedly lost votes at both extremes. But he made me sit up and take notice, and apparently I’m not alone.

Most political candidates, when facing election or re-election, try to figure out what voters want to hear - they go to great lengths and expense to get it right - then feed it back to them.

Telling what they don’t want to hear is very rare.

My wife and I watched the speech together, on YouTube.  As it ended, she said, “What’s the big deal. He just said the truth.”

Sometimes she can be so exasperating. She was right.

But it is a big deal. He said the truth, on an issue where few Americans want to hear the truth.

It’s not surprising that Detroit leads the nation in foreclosures.

But it was comforting to note, when national statistics were released today, that Michigan - or even the Midwest - doesn’t have a monopoly on the problem.

California, Nevada, Florida, Arizona and other warm weather states also had cities in the list of top 20 foreclosure rates.

The combination of a lagging national economy, outrageous increases in property values and the sub-prime mortgage debacle have even fast-growing cities like Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale suffering from high foreclosure rates.

Of course, it doesn’t make it hurt any less for our neighbors in Monroe County and Southeast Michigan who are losing their homes - knowing that families in warm places are hurting, too.

Maybe, however, there’s a practical benefit. The folks in Washington, D.C., haven’t seemed to notice the one-state recession that has afflicted Michigan. A national housing crisis is more likely to get their attention.

I might as well eat crow now rather than later.

I began a blog post eight months ago by noting that I rarely make predictions. I should have taken my own advice.

I didn’t though, going on to predict that none of the leading six candidates in June of 2007 would eventually be elected president in 2007.

My reasoning was that all six - Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama and John Edwards and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Guliani - were critically flawed in some way that would eventually derail their campaigns.

Okay, now we’re approaching Super Tuesday in February of 2008 and there appear to be only four candidates left with a chance of winning the election - Clinton, Obama, McCain and Romney.

I still have a hard time imagining the American electorate choosing Clinton (because of Bill), Obama (because of his race and experience), McCain (because of Iraq) or Romney (because of religion). But even though each is dragging an iron weight behind them, it now appears that one of them will make it to the White House.

Of course, there’s still Michael Bloomberg. But he’s a very long shot as an independent candidate even if he tries - and he maintains he will not.

So I’m ready to admit I was wrong. While several tried in both parties, no shining knight candidates have emerged from the fringes.

One thing is tantalizing about the four candidates that remain. Whether it’s Obama against McCain, or Romney vs. Clinton, or some other combination, the presidential race will be historic.

A forum topic on MonroeTalks.com got me thinking about Tiger Stadium and the summer of 1967.

I only have one Tiger Stadium memory, but it’s a memorable one.

I grew up in Oregon (the state, not the city in Ohio), 2,000 miles from Tiger stadium. But my family took a cross-country camping trip the summer before I entered high school - 1967.

It was memorable for some great baseball games, but also for the terrible riots that marked the low point of the Civil Rights movement.

As we drove into Detroit in July 1967, the road to the stadium took us through some neighborhoods that looked to us like the riots had already occurred (remember, we were from rural Oregon; this was our first look at a ghetto).

Racial tension was high in cities across America that summer. Buffalo had already rioted, and there was talk that Detroit might be next. We were wide-eyed and nervous as my parents argued over the map and inevitably got lost trying to find the stadium.

But when you enter the ballpark, you’re in another world. Amidst the peanut vendors and the autograph seekers, we watched a wonderful doubleheader at Tiger Stadium. Jim Lonborg, on his way to the Cy Young award, won the first game for the Red Sox. The Tigers won the second game.

We saw some of baseball’s greats. Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Tony Conigliaro, Rico Petrocelli, Willie Horton. And we saw a great old baseball park - where you really felt like you were at a Major League game.

That was July 9. The Detroit riots began on July 23, two weeks later.

By that time, we were camping in New Jersey, just a few miles from Newark, which also was being ravaged by riots. We drove through Newark on our way to New York to watch a Mets/Giants game at Shea Stadium.

We watched four games that summer - the Cubs at Wrigley Field in Chicago, an afternoon doubleheader in Detroit and a night game in Shea. It was my first three Major League ballparks; I’ve seen games in 25 others since then. But those first three are special.

We also visited the Montreal Expo that summer, which was our main destination. My parents were school teachers, and seeing a world exposition was something they thought would benefit their students and their children.

But the race riots of 1967 made an impression on all of us that transcends the great experiences in ballparks and expos.

My family partly financed our cross-country camping trip by working in the fields to harvest crops. While that seems insane today, it seemed quite normal to us in the 1960s.

Mexican migrant families came to our small town in Oregon every summer to help the local farmers harvest thier fruit and vegetable crops. It wasn’t a huge immigration issue to us - it was just life in a small town. Why couldn’t we do the same in the cherry orchards of Michigan, or the vegetable fields of New Jersey.

We met several African-American families while picking cucumbers in New Jersey. They helped us learn the ropes in the fields - how to spread the vines to find the cukes, and how to avoid getting your skin rubbed raw by the prickly leaves. 

Then they drove to Newark on the weekend to join the riots, while we went swimming in the lake at the state park where we were camping. The irony was thick.

I can’t separate my memories of baseball games in 1967 from the indelible impression left on a 14-year-old boy of working alongside families who were kind and caring - yet felt the anger inside necessary to join a riot.

And today, when I walk through refurbished downtown Detroit to go to a game at sparkling Comerica Park, those memories still aren’t far from the surface.

You can still enjoy a great experience at the ballpark - as I did a couple weeks ago. And race issues remain troubling in Detroit and most of America’s cities. 

This excerpt from former Vice President Al Gore’s new book sure gets the wheels turning. Regardless of what you think of Al Gore, it’s an interesting comment on the state of America, politics and the media.

It’s not like Mr. Gore is the first to point out the problem. I’ve mentioned it on this blog, and most journalists in America have lost some sleep worrying about it. But the former vice president offers an interesting perspective, coming from near the top of American politics (very near the top).

“American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong.”  - excerpts from Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

It’s not just presidential politics. The same polarization that seems to keep reasonable people from listening to any viewpoint that disagrees with their own has permeated state and local politics, too.

The Granholm-DeVoss race in 2006 and the Iacoangeli-Cappuccilli race in 2005 both were characterized by innuendo, hyperbole and personal attacks, from both sides.

The animosity has continued in both state and city politics - it seems that every issue is seen through the prism of partisanship, instead of moving the city or state forward.   

Politics is unavoidable. There’s nothing wrong with people on both sides of any issue holding strong opinions and presenting persuasive arguments. But it seems as it no one is listening to the other side’s perspective any more.

The fact of the matter is that liberals are right some of the time and conservatives are right some of the time. The same goes for Republicans and Democrats and supporters of both the current and former mayors.

The best government occurs, in my opinion, when power is shared and both parties have to deal with each other - when they’re forced to listen, to sort out the options and search for compromises.

That can lead to serious dialogue. The kind where people actually move from their entrenched positions, grudgingly admitting that maybe someone on the other side had a good idea.

It may be beginning to happen at the federal level, where negotiations over immigration reform have been promising. Michigan desperately needs for it to happen at the state level, where the budget crisis is looming.

Monroe has its own budget crisis on the horizon. Serious cuts in services are likely to be needed. It will be a challenging environment - the kind where anger and animosity could poison the dialogue needed to make good decisions.

Let’s hope that Mr. Gore is wrong - that while the state of political dialogue in America is sick, it’s not terminal.

The lead story in today’s Evening News was about gas prices going up again.

As we discussed the day’s news in this morning’s Page 1 planning meeting, that story quickly jumped to the top. Everyone is affected by rising gas prices, and everyone is angry about it.

I can remember few stories, in my years as a journalist, where readers mistrust the information as much. No one I know really believes what they hear from oil companies.

Now, that doesn’t mean the oil companies aren’t telling the truth. It’s just that skepticism on this subject is out the roof. We’ve all heard too many conflicting stories over the years, while we watched oil company profits soar.

Frankly, it’s my view that gas prices will go as high as Americans will pay. It doesn’t have anything to do with the price of crude or lack of oil refineries or rising demand. It’s all about charging as much as folks will pay. If drivers begin conserving, the price will come down. As long as we keep paying, the price will go up.

Danielle Portteus, an Evening News reporter, posted an interested presentation on the Eyes and Ears forums.  A list of non-so-random facts about education, technology and the global economy, it certainly provides food for thought. You can also find it at the Michigan Department of Education Web site.

In my opinion, the central message is that we’re well into the new global, knowledge-based economy. With the help of their teachers and parents, our students need to be concentrating on learning the fundamentals of math, science and communication (literacy in languages and in computers) in order to be prepared for the jobs of the future.

If we’re not prepared, all those Chinese and Indian students will be. Jobs are like water. The best jobs will flow to where the best-prepared workers live. If China and India lead the world in producing mathematicians and engineers, that’s where the best jobs will go.

Google chose Ann Arbor for its advertising department because Ann Arbor has a good pool of highly educated workers. But how many other Michigan cities can say that? 

Low-skill jobs that don’t require higher education will flow to wherever the lowest paid workers live. That’s why manufacturing jobs are moving to countries with cheaper standards of living. In the future, we won’t want the manufacturing jobs - if we have them, it will mean we’re the lowest paid workers.

The problem, of course, for Michigan and the rest of the United States, is that our economy depends on those manufacturing jobs for a few more years. How can we maintain our standard of living while we transition from a manufacturing economy to the knowledge economy of the future? That’s the $64,000 question.

Maybe Charles Ballard has the answer. A professor of economics at Michigan State University, he’s speaking tomorrow at the Business and Industry Luncheon at Monroe County Community College. The topic is his latest book, “Michigan’s Economic Future.”

His book covers some of these same issues, although for the most part it focuses on the mess Michigan has created for itself in funding of government services. Mr. Ballard’s talk should be interesting, given the stalemate in Lansing over the state’s budgt crisis.

I got a call from a reader last week complaining that we’re not balanced in covering the auto industry.

It was her perception that we put bad news about Ford, GM and Chrysler on Page 1, and bury any good news inside the paper. She thought we put good news about Toyota and Honda on Page 1, and hide any bad news on the back pages.

While I disagree with her basic premise, I understand the frustration.

News about Ford, GM and Chrysler is critically important to our readers. Many of them work for the former Big Three or their suppliers, or have friends or relatives who depend on the auto industry.

That’s also the case with many of our employees, who have spouses, children, parents, relatives and friends with ties to the auto industry. We want the Big Three to rebound, too.

In recent years there has been plenty of bad news about Ford, GM and Chrysler on Page 1. We put it there when we think it belongs there - such as today when there’s a story about the future of Chrysler on the front page.

When there is good new about any of the U.S. auto companies or their suppliers, I have a feeliing it will be on Page 1, too - simply because it will be unusual.

Here’s hoping for a day sometime in the future when good news about the auto industry is routine and won’t be considered for the front page.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s state of the state speech, if it was anything, was a challenge to the residents of Michigan and the members of the legislature.

It was a challenge to look at Michigan in a different way. Not as a state where we’re entitled to a good job in a factory, but as a state where quality schools and universities produce workers of the future. Not as a state controlled by Democrats or Republicans, the left or the right, but as a state where the two parties work together to create government that is smart and efficient.

Of course, the proof isn’t in the speech, which Gov. Granholm does well. The proof will be in the details of the budget released Thursday.

I will be looking for evidence that her numbers back up her verbiage. In her speech, the governor laid the groundwork for new taxes by also promising significant cuts in state programs and restructuring of government to make it more efficient.

Her basic premise is that if we try to solve the budget crisis with cuts alone, we won’t be able to make the investments in the state’s future that are critical.

I think there’s a chance Michigan residents will buy that premise. But only if there really are cuts, and if there really are fundamental changes to make government more efficient.

With Gov. Granholm’s state of the state speech scheduled for tonight, a serious discussion about the future of Michigan is about to begin.

I spent some time over the weekend at a Michigan Press Association meeting in Grand Rapids that included talks by the governor, the speaker of the House and the Senate president. All were using terms like historic crisis, new vision for Michigan’s future, and rare opportunity to re-invent our state.

The consensus seemed to be that Michigan’s economic crisis is so deep and pervasive it can’t be solved in the usual ways. Budget cuts, in the traditional sense, won’t work. The revenue hole is too deep. Tax increases, in the usual ways, also won’t work. We can’t tax ourselves out of this mess, either.

I was relieved to see that there was little blaming going on. It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is. The decline of the U.S. auto industry; past largesse when there was plenty of  money to throw around; Republicans, Democrats; managment, unions; it doesn’t matter.

What impressed me was the apparent willingness by both parties and both branches of government to work together to find solutions. I suspect, if her speech last week was any clue, that Gov. Granholm is going to focus on the need to create a new vision of the Michigan we want in our future, then re-engineer our government to get there.

It won’t be easy, and that’s a huge understatement. There are plenty of people, groups and organizations with a vested interest in the past. They’d rather go down with the ship than change course.

There are others who will want to shrink state government to stay within our current tax base - even if it means cutting our nose off to spite our face. Cuts in higher education - when the global marketplace is screaming out for a more highly educated workforce - would fit in that category.

And others will want to simply turn the tax tap higher, strangling the economy in the process. While creating a vibrant future for Michigan requires financing essential services and priming the pump in key areas like education and economic development, we can’t afford high-tax solutions.

The next few months could be historic. We could look back to 2007 as the year Michigan’s economic crisis forced a thoughtful, significant re-engineering of state government and how it operates.

And while I’m engaging in wishful thinking, it also could be the year when state leaders put aside their political differences and worked together.

Wouldn’t that be nice.