By LAWRENCE COSENTINO

Debbie Stabenow, junior senator from the state of Michigan, doesn’t really have to take mid-term exams any more. It’s been three decades since she graduated from Michigan State University, setting out on a path of public service that culminated in her election to the U.S. Senate three years ago. Nor does the Constitution of the United States require senators to account for themselves publicly, as the President must in his State of the Union address.

Some people, however, love to inflict challenges upon themselves. Call it compulsive, rather than compulsory, test-taking. Last week, Stabenow embarked upon a whirlwind tour through the state, “mid-term report” in hand, updating reporters and constituents on the ups and downs of a momentous three years in the nation’s life.

The senator’s Lansing stop last Wednesday began with a formal press briefing, in which she outlined her legislative accomplishments thus far. Then came an informal radio appearance on “City Pulse On the Air,” in which Stabenow kicked back and described her own day-to-day experience in the Senate, reminisced about her years at Michigan State, and explored the personal roots of her own commitment to public service.

With early-won memberships in several major committees (banking, agriculture and budget) and a slew of legislative sponsorships, Stabenow has plunged straightaway into contentious national wrangles overt he budget deficit, homeland security and health care.

“She’s doing great,” enthuses her friend and colleague, four-term U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. “I feel blessed that she’s here. Her experience, both in the House of Representatives here [in Washington] and in Lansing, has given her a great deal of knowledge in how the system works.”

“She also has great interpersonal skills,” adds Levin. “People on both sides of the aisle like her because she’s got a very pleasant nature. But she’s also a real fighter, and people respect that around here.”

Bill Ballenger, longtime state pol and editor of the “Inside Michigan Politics” newsletter, is also impressed. “She’s done very well,” he says. “She’s always been a very focused legislator with a real program — in contrast, for instance, to the governor. It’s unclear to anybody what Jennifer Granholm thinks or believes, but Debbie Stabenow has never had that problem. She’s got a very agile political mind, great people skills, and lots of energy and focus. She’s a natural politician — everything that [Stabenow’s Republican predecessor in the Senate] Spence Abraham wasn’t.”

In an increasingly partisan political climate, Stabenow will need all the skills she can muster to advance her ambitious agenda. For the second half of her term, the senator has put together a big wish list: major retooling of the recently enacted Medicare plan, including a rollback of privatization and expansion of prescription drug benefits; a bigger legislative shotgun in the face of Canadian trash imports; new tax credits to keep job-rich companies in the United States; revival of the dormant Patients’ Bill of Rights; tighter homeland security on the Northern border; a boost in Michigan’s share of national transportation revenues; a new war against cancer; safeguards against invasive species and water diversion for the Great Lakes; and a connect-the-dots trail linking 120 Michigan lighthouses, to be administered by the National Park Service (for starters).

What is more, Stabenow hopes to keep all these kites aloft in the teeth of a seriously contrary political wind. The picture she painted of Washington’s political landscape last week does not bode well for those who hope for a new bipartisan spirit to emerge in American politics.

“Republicans are in the majority, working directly with the White House,” says Stabenow. “There are true believers and ideologues in the administration, ready to act out their beliefs that all government is bad. These people have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude. Our new Majority Leader, Bill Frist, pretty much takes orders from the White House.”

“That’s not to say that bipartisan work isn’t being done,” she is quick to add, citing a federal ban on Great Lakes drilling she authored that became law in 2001 (the ban remains in effect through fiscal year 2005). Another plus on Stabenow’s mid-term report is her successful push for radiation detection devices at the Michigan-Ontario border, now in place in Port Huron and Detroit.

Successes like these, said Stabenow, show that the bipartisan system is not truly “broken,” as some pundits have declared. “But in the big sense,” adds Stabenow, “when we’re debating fundamental issues like the war in Iraq, tax cuts, health care, there is serious division.” The senator also described how the fog of ideological war has been poisoned further by the increasingly popular notion “that somehow, to debate or dissent is un-American.” It is a notion Stabenow attributes to many members of the current administration, and one that she passionately rejects. “There is nothing more American than to dissent from your government,” she goes on. “That’s what this country was founded on.”

“Debbie Stabenow has always had an ability to cloak or mute her pretty liberal voting record in moderate or even conservative-sounding rhetoric,” says Bill Ballenger, “which makes her a pretty appealing candidate to moderate and independent voters who wouldn’t approve of her overall voting record if they really knew it.”

Stabenow’s willingness to dissent was most conspicuous when she voted last year, along with 22 other senators, to oppose the authorization for President Bush to order American forces into Iraq. “What the president asked for,” explained Stabenow, “was unlimited authorization to reverse 200 years of American policy to a ‘strike first’ policy. Nowhere was I given evidence that this was an imminent threat.” Stabenow maintained there was still time to wait for stronger evidence — indeed, any evidence —of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then take a stronger case to the world, resisting the urge to cross the strategic Rubicon into a first-strike posture. “The administration did it exactly right in Afghanistan, and we had time to do it in Iraq,” she said.

Discussion then turned an unlikely dissenter from the current administration’s policies — Paul O’Neill, the president’s erstwhile Treasury secretary, who was hitting the talk shows with dire warnings about the ballooning budget deficit. “Paul O’Neill is a very respected business leader,” commented Stabenow. “I’ve worked with him, and found him to be a straight shooter. So it means something when he says these things.”

O’Neill’s warning is a hard one to get across to constituents, but Stabenow clearly considers the present administration’s handling of the economy reckless and irresponsible. “Two years ago, I was sitting around with the other members of the Finance Committee, figuring out what to do with the largest surplus in the nation’s history,” she fumed. “Now, we’re trying to figure out how to deal with the biggest deficit ever. It’s bound to have long-term implications, certainly on interest rates, and it’s going to have a serious impact on our ability to meet our Social Security and Medicare obligations.”

“Let me just throw a couple of numbers at you,” she added, looking as irate as her perpetually kindly composure would permit. “The Bush tax cuts will remove14 trillion dollars from the national budget over the next 75 years. The entire liability of Social Security and Medicare put together is ten trillion!”

That evening, when asked whether her deep involvement in banking and financial issues comes as a surprise to anyone, Stabenow had a ready answer. “There are still stereotypes about the kinds of issues that women in politics will have expertise in or care about,” she said. “Mary Landrieu, the senator from Louisiana who chairs the terrorism subcommittee, is never seen being interviewed as an authority on terrorism. If it’s health care, education, families, children, then they will turn to women.”

“I think she breaks a lot of stereotypes,” says Carl Levin of his colleague. “For instance, she’s very knowledgeable about agriculture, and to the extent here’s a stereotype about that, she surely breaks it, and the same is true of homeland security and a bunch of other issues.”

As for any advice or mentoring from the senior senator, Levin brushes the idea aside. “She’s an equal partner,” he says. “She knows the ropes. She came to the Senate with an in-depth experience in legislative process. She doesn’t need any advice from me.” It’s like my brother [Sander Levin, U.S. congressman from Michigan’s 12th District]. We agree about 98 percent of the time. We’re not clones, but we’re close, and the same is true of Senator Stabenow.”

For Stabenow, kindred spirits can be found across party lines as well. Each month, she joins the other 13 female senators for informal dinners at D.C. restaurants such as the Monocle. “The rule is, you don’t talk business,” she smiles. “It’s just people hanging out for dinner. You talk about what’s going on in your life, how your family is doing. It’s a chance to relax with other people who understand why you look so tired.”

Last week’s visit to the Michigan State University campus turned Stabenow’s thoughts to her college days, and the turbulent world events that shaped her decision to enter politics. While at State, she lived at Hubbard Hall (she was an R.A. her junior year), where she often sang and played folk guitar with other students in the first-floor lounge. “It was a very transformational time for me,” she recalled. “I had come from a small town (Clare), a very close-knit family – my grandfather was an avid Republican. My parents weren’t very political, but they were very active in the community and the church.

“My grandfather and my father had the Olds-Cadillac dealership in Clare, and it was very common for my dad to bring someone home for dinner whom we never met before, someone with a hard-luck story. So I grew up with a very strong message of helping people, but I had never translated that into politics.”

“Then, coming to campus in 1968, with the Vietnam war going on, I was drawn to the Democratic party. I saw energy, willingness to debate and change what was happening.”

While Stabenow weighed careers in medicine, social work, and criminal justice, she had to pay the bills. A family musical background, and a Hubbard Hall singing partner named Dave Perez, made the decision easy. “I thought, if I have to work, I might as well do something fun,” she recalled, “so instead of waiting tables or working as a cashier, we auditioned and ended up singing.” Thus was born the short-lived “Dave and Debbie” folk act, which performed on weekends at the Rathskellar, the basement of the present-day Coral Gables. “I ended up making more money on the weekend singing than I made all week waitressing.”

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Michigan State, Stabenow followed a stepwise path to national office that seems inevitable in retrospect, but involved many firsts in Michigan politics. She served on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners from 1974 to 1978, becoming the youngest person and first woman to chair it. From 1979 to 1990 she served in the Michigan state house, again becoming the first woman ever to preside. Then came four years in the state Senate, from 1991 to 1994.

At each step of the way, Stabenow found personally meaningful ways to fulfill her long-cherished goal of public service. As a county commissioner, she helped establish one of the first battered women’s shelters in the state. As a state representative, she spearheaded passage of domestic violence and child car safety laws. But when Stabenow reached national office for the first time in 1996, serving two terms representing Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, her less than satisfying experience confirmed what many Americans suspected of the United States Congress— it’s a zoo. “The House of Representatives is so big, and it’s very, very partisan,” says Stabenow. “It’s very difficult to get things done across party lines, and I was very frustrated by that.”

The chance to represent the entire state also helped lure Stabenow from the crowded lower House. “I also love to show Michigan off,” she adds with a smile. Twice last summer, Stabenow hosted senatorial conclaves on Mackinac Island, glowing with pride as officials from landlocked states gaped in amazement at Michigan’s inland seas. “I remember Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota looking out from the Grand Hotel onto the straits,” she recalls. “He said to me, ‘I’ve never seen so much water. When you said “Great Lakes,” I thought you meant a big lake I could look across.’ I was very pleased to be able to show off to my colleagues.”

Stabenow’s show-and-tell was more than a play for bragging rights. “Frankly, my ulterior motive was to go back and get funding for measures dealing with invasive species and cleaning up the Great Lakes, and I wanted them to see that we’re not talking about a mud puddle here. This is 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.”

“Washington is an exciting place to work, and it’s beautiful in its own way.” she says, “but I come home almost every weekend to keep myself grounded. It’s very important that the members of Congress not begin to view Washington as home. I bank here in Lansing, my dry cleaning’s here, my car’s here. This is home. That gives me the right perspective.”

In the coming months, Stabenow is bound to be in the thick of complex, perhaps rancorous debates over the budget, health care and foreign policy. Should a vacancy appear on the Supreme Court, the mother of all political fights will likely ensue, sorely testing the dignity and decorum and of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

And that’s not the worst the job has to offer. “After 9/11, I was in the building that had anthrax,” says Stabenow. “We lost the building for 96 days and a lot of things went along with that. It’s very intense.” Yet the senator maintains that there are joys in this “hair-pulling” job “every single day.”

“Just last Friday, there was something I really felt terrific about,” she says. “I was in Port Huron with the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, inspecting the border area, and we walked around the corner and saw this radiation equipment that I was able to get placed last spring. I stopped for a moment, thinking that at least we know someone’s not going to come through there with a nuclear weapon. When I see something tangible like that, it really makes me feel good.”

Care to respond? Send letters to letters@lansingcitypulse.com. View our Letters policy.