But even if no candidates had been there, the connection between local and national politics would still have been evident, because almost every issue of large-scale national consequence is playing out in this challenged, medium-sized city.

For instance:

Basic Questions of Growth and Decline

Erie was for decades the third-largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But its population has fallen from about 140,000 in the 1960s to about 100,000 now, making it fourth-largest, after Allentown (which we visited and wrote about here). Erie’s role as a refugee-resettlement locale is a significant reason it has stayed as large as it has.

Old Economy, New Economy

On the way into town from the Tom Ridge International Airport along 12th Street, you pass one abandoned-looking factory after another. (Former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Ridge is from Erie, along with the late air-combat theorist John Boyd and C-Span anchor and executive Steve Sculley.) On the way out of town, driving toward Penn State’s Behrend campus, you pass another huge factory whose roof is simply falling in, and all of this is apart from the steady contraction at GE.

That’s the obvious part. What was more surprising was learning that work is still underway in most of those factories (though not the one above); that advanced manufacturing is expanding in the area even as the largest factories are shrinking (as explained in this Jefferson Educational Society paper by Perry Wood and Jim Wertz); that tech incubators are full of new companies; and that Penn State, Behrend, has extensive connections with manufacturers aimed at keeping higher-wage manufacturing in the area and preparing local people for those jobs.

Structural Unfairness

National-level governance in the United States is hobbled by a number of no-longer-sensible but almost-impossible-to-change structural rules. The nine Supreme Court Justices should have staggered 18-year terms, so that every president would get an appointment every two years, in place of today’s grim actuarial battles over lifetime posts. Line-drawing for congressional districts and state legislatures should follow California’s nonpartisan anti-gerrymandering system, rather than being one more frontier for all-out partisan warfare. A “National Popular Vote” provision would give voters around the country equal incentive to turn out, rather than today’s overemphasis on Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And don’t get me started on the Senate. All these rule-changes would be sensible; none is likely.

At the civic level, we wrote last year about how San Bernardino’s flawed city charter, which forces California’s poorest city to pay police and firefighter salaries pegged to the richest cities in the state, compounded its many other problems. As Ryan Hagen of the San Bernardino Sun has reported, another effort to change that charter has made its way onto this year’s ballot.