Truscott: Bold leaders needed for Michigan's future

GRAND RAPIDS - Michigan’s leaders would do well by a piece of advice former Gov. George Romney gave then-Gov.-Elect John Engler before his first inauguration in 1991, John Truscott, who served as Engler’s long-time press secretary, told students in Grand Valley State University’s Leadership Academy Fellows Program.

“Be bold,” Truscott, president of The John Truscott Group, recalled. “We kind of used that as a mantra throughout the entire administration. We are not going to sit back and just tinker at the margins. We are going to be bold and we are going to really get things done.”

The Leadership Academy Fellows Program, run by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, is designed to give GVSU students the skills, confidence and contacts needed to be strong leaders.

Engler’s bold reforms resulted in a “waterfall” of negative publicity, Truscott said, but the governor was vindicated at the polls and voters turned control of the House over to Republicans and elected Engler two more times.

“He was not going to let the external forces get to him,” Truscott said. “He was plowing straight ahead and he was going to fix things. It wasn’t a time for weak stomachs at all. This was really brutal, difficult stuff, but if you got to know him, you knew he was a man who stood on his principles.”