The northern states that border and neighbor the five Great Lakes suffer from common economic problems that would benefit from a regional approach.

It is also the case that in 2006, all eight of them except Indiana will hold gubernatorial elections. In 2008 neither major party yet has an obvious candidate for president, and it is obvious that the Great Lakes states, Pennsylvania and Ohio noteworthy among them, will play a crucial, swing role in those elections.

Those facts taken together provide an opportunity for those states to put in front of gubernatorial and presidential candidates their case for a firm pledge to a concerted economic development program. That request -- if developed -- would be backed up by millions of potential votes to the candidate or candidates who offer a measured, credible response to the appeal.

This, basically, is the case that was made in Pittsburgh over the past few days by a visiting team from the Great Lakes Regional Economic Initiative, developed by the Brookings Institution, led here by John C. Austin of the University of Michigan. He was accompanied in his meetings with foundation, university and company representatives by Ellen Pope of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington and Court Gould, director of Sustainable Pittsburgh.

The need in the Great Lakes states is for job creation, particularly designed to prevent a drain of the young and talented; infrastructure -- for example, high-speed rail and cyber infrastructure; and reform of inefficient governmental and tax structures.

The Great Lakes states' assets include the benign "Third Coast" -- no hurricanes or floods, a fifth of the world's fresh water, a still industrious and talented work force, a third of the Fortune 1,000 firms, producing a third of America's gross domestic product, and lots of research universities and institutions.

On the negative side, the barriers are formidable. The main one is that the political structure of the region, focused on states, encourages a "beggar thy neighbor" approach. Gubernatorial candidates and presidential candidates as well, based on the Electoral College system, focus their political efforts on winning states, not regions, for the most part. There is no Great Lakes Caucus in Congress. Even though the team said they had found governors in the region interested in the regional initiative, there is no strong Midwest governors association. Among other negative phenomena, members of Congress take a "pork" approach to seeking federal resources for their region, wanting to put projects in their individual districts, without regard to the needs of the overall region.

Even though the Great Lakes Regional Economic Initiative faces serious barriers, including a political structure that divides Americans by state, the idea is still good and makes sense. Ask the question: Are the problems of people of southwestern Pennsylvania substantially different from those of southeastern Ohio or the West Virginia Panhandle? The answer is clearly no: We are in the same boat and can help each other. It is wrong to be driven to compete with each other rather than to cooperate in developing the region as a healthy whole.