There were two ways the regulars survive mornings at the

. Either they employ that time honored method of avoiding a hangover: Stay drunk; or they shuffle around the Grand Hotel lobby, black coffee in hand, looking for complimentary Aspirin packets marked with the hotel’s iconic horse-and-buggy logo.

I’m exaggerating here, but only somewhat. There is no Grand Hotel-brand aspirin, just a definite sentiment against loud noises before lunch.

To truly understand the culture of the Mackinac Policy Conference, consider the free beer and wine served at the Mackinaw City docks Wednesday afternoon as conference goers waited for a ferry to the island.

It’s kind of frightening how much this crowd needs its booze, actually. If one looks hard enough, one can see a manic desire for spirituous beverages hiding behind the smart phones and hail fellow veneer of normalcy. If some bizarre event left the conference dry, it would go full-on Lord of the Flies in about five minutes.

Talking on the porch is called "porch talk"

Conference veterans often say the official event is almost less important than the informal “porch talk” interactions that took place last week. Rick Snyder in his opening remarks asked conference goers to lobby attending lawmakers on behalf of the bridge project formerly known as the DRIC. When introducing Harold Ford, Dennis Archer Jr. also gave an obligatory nod to this unofficial conference. The “porch talk” talk continued from there.

Mackinac’s first day officially concluded around 6:30 PM, much to relief of attendees who politely sat through panels and speeches waiting for the bar to open. This is the real reason for this event. Or the real reason so many people attend. In the parlance of corporate America, it’s called networking. Normal people call it drinking. A lot. In suits.

Actually, the suits part of that isn’t completely accurate. Many conference goers ignored the Grand Hotel’s evening dress code (coats and ties for gentlemen and skirts or dresses for ladies). At least two prominent local politicians were seen sans necktie.

Normally I’m not one to worry about such conventions. This is the exception. If I wanted a casual Wednesday night drink, I would’ve been at Honest John’s in cargo shorts and a Tigers cap. At the Grand Hotel, wearing a seersucker blazer and nursing a Manhattan, I expect the swells to respect the Grand Hotel’s aristocratic traditions and put on a damn tie.

It’s not simply a matter of etiquette. The local power elite flaunting the Grand Hotel’s dress code is something of an allegory for all that is wrong with Detroit and Michigan. The people at the top don’t believe the rules apply to them.

That attitude explains why Detroit’s downtown redevelopment effort was for a generation an ineffective outlier compared to similar, more functional cities. It explains why the old GM didn’t think it would go bankrupt building

or positioning Buick as “the last car you’ll ever buy.” It also explains why prominent local businessmen made

to a disgraced ex-mayor in a manner that seems very close to offering an inducement to make an official act.

Still, the Policy Conference’s schmoozing culture is a sight to behold. Trying to navigate a path from the hotel’s front door to the street Wednesday evening was a little like Barry Sanders trying to bounce through a hole at the line of scrimmage. You go left, you go right, you try to side-step a gaggle surrounding Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson without bumping some overtanned lady’s drink.

I feared there might be no greater Mackinac Conference faux pas greater than spilling someone’s complimentary drink. That sort of thing might anger up the regulars the way rolling up to a Harley bar on a Honda might irritate the Hell’s Angels.

Can we all not get along so swimmingly?

In truth, the one intractable etiquette rule at Mackinac has nothing to do with dress codes or beverages. The thing one must not do at Mackinac is disagree. Panel discussions, in particular, were exercises in agreement. The answers to our woes have been, apparently, agreed upon in advance. All that’s left is explaining these answers to each other one more time while waiting for the bar to open.

This is absurd because if these people did in fact have all the answers, Detroit – and by extension Michigan – wouldn’t look like it does.

As a confidant suggested to me, al-Qaeda could’ve done Detroit a huge favor with a terrorist attack on the conference. Although a terror attack would likely affect innocent bystanders. Better to stuff all of official Detroit and a rabid wolverine into a conference swag bag, and then toss the lot of them off the Mackinac Bridge. Ok, even that’s perhaps a bit extreme.

What the Mackinac Policy Conference desperately needed was a real clash of ideas.

UAW President Bob King spoke Wednesday night about “the new UAW” to a polite-enough audience and American Axle CEO Dick Dauch sat on a clap-happy manufacturing panel later in the week. It was as if each of those events took place on separate planets.

Did no one think about putting both men on stage at the same time for a vigorous debate about American manufacturing in the global economy? That would have been compelling. Surely the delicate souls of Detroit’s leadership class could have handled such an adversarial discussion.

Instead, there were a lot of people agreeing with other people. The average audience question to Governor Rick Snyder could be summed up as: “

Hi, big fan. What's the best part about being you?

”

There were also a lot of old people talking about Michigan retaining young people. Mostly absent from the conversation were, you know, actual young people. God knows there are enough of them willing to tell their story. The Phil Cooleys, Torya Blanchards, and Emily Doerrs of the world are arguably over-exposed, but that sort of perspective was sorely missed in Mackinac’s “save the young people” conversation.

The gray hairs, I don’t think, spend much time at Open City meetings, reading the Detroit Declaration, or attending last spring’s Rust Belt/Artist Belt conference. To hear about it on Mackinac you’d think what young people really want is old people talking about retaining young people. And the embarrassingly terrible “I’m a Believer” campaign birthed at the 2010 Mackinac conference by the 60+ set. More than a few 2011 attendees – including Sen. Carl Levin – were wearing “

” lapel pins.

It’s all the more surreal that this artificial Babbitt meets Animal House affair takes place on Mackinac Island. The thing about the island’s quaint old-timey charm is it’s authentic. Largely because of the absence of cars – or “

” as Michigan’s great traditionalist thinker, the late Russell Kirk, called them – Mackinac seems quaint because it is quaint. That time warp works to the island's advantage. Mackinac is a bona fide precious jewel.

Mackinac makes for strange drinking partners

The island’s authenticity is a neat juxtaposition to a reality that silly marketing campaigns is all metro Detroit can reasonably expect to emerge from the conference. That’s a shame because there could be real value in assembling local leaders in one spot every year to discuss major issues. If the discussion is an actual dialogue rather than a well-crafted monologue. We should expect more from this thing than an open bar and agreement on the predetermined consensus.

It’s easy to knock the networking ruse – let’s be honest, anything accomplished on the Grand Hotel’s porch last week could have happened on any random Tuesday at the DAC – but you can’t avoid people during the Mackinac Policy Conference. It was a reality made all too clear for Mayor Dave Bing and his communications director, Karen Dumas, when

arrived on the island. There’s something to be said for proximity.

Thursday night I ended up having a drink with Matthew Moroun. It’s not every day I happen upon a billionaire, never mind a billionaire whose family business I’ve been known to

and

criticize. Poor guy walked into the wrong bar at the wrong time, I suppose. The upshot of this accidental meeting was a pleasant conversation about how much we disagree on some things.

In the context of Mackinac, Matthew Moroun was something of my kindred spirit. He was the contrarian looking to rain on Governor Snyder’s plan to make the conference a pep rally for the NITC/DRIC plan. I side with the Morouns almost as often as the 2008 Lions won football games, but it was good to see someone challenging the Mackinac monologue.

Don’t kid yourselves, if Mike Bouchard had been elected governor, there probably wouldn’t have been a discouraging word from Mackinac regulars about twinning the Ambassador Bridge.

The Mackinac Policy Conference needs more contrarians, on the podiums and panels as well as among the attendees. Because, even with the world’s greatest open bar, you can’t squeeze new ideas talking exclusively to the same old people.