Columns

Ari B. Adler

First Rule of Politics
and Twitter: Be Yourself

October 17, 2011

As a former sparring partner of Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her communications team, I admit I’ve been frustrated the past few months over the media’s apparent insatiable appetite for the former governor. It seems that whenever she tweets, someone has to put together a supposed “news” story about it.

I’ve said on more than one occasion, “Who cares what she thinks anymore?” But then I realized why the reporters were talking and writing about those tweets — because they were sincere and real, and that made them newsworthy. We are finally seeing a glimpse of the governor that could have been, if only she’d been herself rather than the person she thought she was supposed to be.

This came to light for me when I was watching the episode of Off the Record where Tim Skubick interviewed Granholm and her husband, Dan Mulhern. I sent a note to a colleague who had worked with the Granholm Administration over the years.

I wrote that while I disagreed with most of her philosophies, my biggest reaction to the interview was, “Where was this person for eight years?” If she would have brought half of the chutzpah, personality and genuine philosophical debate she displayed on Off the Record to the Governor’s Office, Michigan might have actually seen her accomplish something besides becoming one of the state’s greatest gubernatorial disappointments.

I was told by this colleague that I had made a great analysis because on that episode we actually got to see Granholm in an engaging way, a way that is much closer to who she truly is. One of Granholm’s greatest faults, this colleague wrote, was that she was always a tad too concerned about image and thus violated the first rule of politics: be yourself.

And that’s why the reporters are writing about a lot of Granholm’s tweets. She’s being herself. She’s being personable and persuasive, insulting and infuriating, scholarly yet smarmy. She is saying and doing things now that not everyone will agree with, not just from a political or philosophical standpoint, but from the point of, gee, should a former governor be saying that?

I haven’t read the governor’s book, and really have no interest in doing so. I believe Mulhern’s influence on the book was a negative one and it took it too far toward tabloid writing. But I will at least give them both credit for being real people for a change.

People know I work for Republicans so it’s quite likely I would almost always disagree with Granholm. But pushing all politics aside, I still believe Jennifer Granholm was one of the worst governors this state ever had. I’m not just opposed to what I consider her failed policies, but it was mind-boggling how she could never get out front on an issue and take a stand.

From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed she always spent too much time listening to her advisors on what she should or shouldn’t say. Then, by the time she said anything it looked too much like the band was coming down the street and she had jumped out in front to “lead” it.

The strength of social media sites like Twitter is that people are sometimes given a glimpse into the real person behind a public persona. Perhaps more politicians will learn the lesson about “being yourself.”

And, through the power of social media, we’ll get to see that when it still matters. Once they’re out of office, we can’t really use that information to help affect positive change. We can just look back and say, “If only…”

Ari B. Adler is a professional communicator with experience as a newspaper reporter and editor as well as a government and corporate spokesperson. He is the press secretary to Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger and an adjunct instructor at Michigan State University. You can follow him on Twitter at @aribadler.

Columns

Tim Skubick

Granholm Refused
to Concede Defeat

October 7, 2011

All of Michigan’s modern day governors have possessed an abiding sense of public service and a healthy dose of optimism. The more you watch these captains of state, the more you appreciate that internal need to see the glass not only half full, but eventually overflowing.

Say hello again to former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who concedes for most of her eight years at the helm she was “a bit delusional” about her ability to fix the economic maelstrom she was in. Rose-colored glasses are sometimes out of focus.

She and former First Gentleman Dan Mulhern have been back on stage hawking their new book, A Governor’s Story, and the punditry class has had a field day tearing it to shreds.

One criticism rings hollow, however: that the book is self-serving. Memo to punditry cabal: folks write books so they can spin the story their way.

Mitt Romney didn’t write a book because he wanted to honor his Michigan heritage.

Sarah Palin didn’t write a book because she had something to say; she saw dollar signs, her detractors contend.

So here is the former First Family’s version of their reality, and turns out they disagreed on what to put in and leave out of their tome.

Under cross-examination, Gov. Granholm confesses she wanted nothing to do with the personal side of her life getting into print.

First Hubby, the true self-discloser in the duo, wanted to write about how he lost part of his wife and his life; how the personal cost of public service, which the public seldom sees, stares you right in the mug.

But back to the economy and her ill-placed optimism. She was determined to save the state on her own as the state headed deeper into the dumper.

She refused to concede defeat. She was convinced that, “if we work hard enough, we’ll be able to fix it. I really thought I’d be able to do it.”

During all this Mr. M. is on the sidelines without rosy specs. He’s trying to counterbalance her “incessant” drive; he reminds her she is not God, and God will not hold her accountable for the state’s record jobless rate.

Stubbornly, she ignores those words of wisdom.

But a phone call changed that…eight years into her mission.

“It finally dawned on me when President Obama called and put General Motors into bankruptcy. Even up to that point, I was a bit delusional about it.” She finally gives in; she will not solve this problem on her watch.

And therein lies the danger of excess optimism: it prevents you from dealing with the gravity of the situation.

Some insight into why she could not surrender. On her personality tests she emerges as a combat general, which is why her favorite movie is Patton.

But governors are not generals and, as Mulhern writes in the book, “You want to be perfect. You’re not. At some point, you have to accept it.”

By the time she accepts the harsh truth, it’s time to exit the battlefield.

“You wanted to be a perfect governor?” she was asked.

“True,” she whispers.

“And you could not do it.”

“Right. That’s exactly right.”

It’s not the legacy General Granholm wants on the history books.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series Off the Record since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

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Dan the Jerk
Much has been written lately about the new Granholm/Mulhern book on their life in the bubble, and part of the focus has been on the so-called “love story” between the two. Well, turns out — and this was somehow left out of the book A Governor’s Story — that it was the love that almost wasn’t.

“Actually, I thought he was a jerk,” former Gov. Granholm whispers into the camera.

“Jerk?” Dan Mulhern says while sitting right next to her.

Yep. Jerk. She unfolds the story of the first time they met, waiting to board a cheap airline from New Jersey back to Harvard, where they both attended law school.

Seems Danny Boy was chatting with a lass in line about how he had been out drinking and dancing the night before. You know how men are about getting drunk.

Ms. Granholm was singularly unimpressed but couldn’t help herself when he mentions he is going back to Harvard.

“You go to Harvard?” she intervened in the conversation, and that one question launched the romance…although it took some time before he actually got a date.

She kept him at arms length, which frustrated the heck out of him, but he was as tenacious as she was; the romantic Dan went to work. He placed “pressed flowers” in her mail box and demonstrated there was more to him than drinking.

They fell in love, and here they are today, out on the stump hawking their book and making revelations about their relationship that she preferred to keep secret. Dan, on the other hand, pushed her to disclose and she reluctantly did, while refusing to call him a jerk for doing it.

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

A Governor’s Story
About Herself

September 23, 2011

Early in her just-published autobiography, A Governor’s Story,* Jennifer Granholm tells a mild falsehood that is key to understanding what her book really is about.

She claims that immediately after making her victory speech, timed carefully for the 11 p.m. news, she was pulled aside by her communications director, who told her that her running mates for secretary of state and attorney general had lost.

“You’ll be the lone Democrat in a sea of Republicans,” her “efficient, whip-smart” aide Genna Gent supposedly told her.

However, that conversation couldn’t have occurred. Gary Peters, the nominee for attorney general, led most of the night, and the race was so close he did not concede defeat for almost three weeks.

A minor point, yes. But significant, because although the very first line in this rather bizarre book is, “This is the story of Michigan during my years as governor,” it’s not really about that.

What it is about is Jennifer Granholm. Jennifer alone, battling for the state of Michigan against the world; Jennifer against the forces of evil; Jennifer, at the end, putting the state on the road to recovery. A more appropriate title would have been, simply, “Me.”

Had this book really been “the story of Michigan during my years as governor,” it might have mentioned the name of the attorney general or the secretary of state, for example.

Even Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s name might have been in there.

You’d think the author would have mentioned the man who succeeded her as governor, Rick Snyder. Or maybe her party’s nominee to replace her, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero.

Nah. Not a word. She does once mention, in passing, former Detroit mayor Ken Cockrel Jr., but spells his name wrong.

What is even odder is that while the book is written entirely in the first person, it supposedly was co-authored by both Jennifer Mulhern Granholm and her husband, Daniel Granholm Mulhern.

Dan, the former first gentleman, appears as a combination of mildly resentful but always loyal helpmate and as her personal in-house philosophic muse. This makes for some of the most oddly stilted dialogue ever heard outside of bad psychological novels:

Dan softened momentarily. “You are being called to something more right now,
Jen. To somewhere you’ve never been. This is your crucible. So many factory
workers are lost, and this state feels, lost, so you’re lost, too. But you’re human,
just like they are.

“And it’s time to just admit it to yourself…you’re not God. So let it go. Let go of
the ego.” To this Granholm says: “I’ll try. Thanks for caring so much.”

To be fair, she indeed was unfairly blamed for things beyond her control and beyond her power to fix. The book accurately shows her trying in vain to persuade companies like Pfizer and Comerica not to pull up stakes and leave Michigan.

She also worked tirelessly to save the auto industry and to attempt to attract new industry to the state. Where she did fail, however, was in terms of leadership, perhaps because she totally failed to “let go the ego.” She bitterly attacks legislative leaders of both parties, sneering at former Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop’s hair gel and monogrammed shirts.

However, she never was able to put together any kind of coalition, in part because she seldom was consistent. Nor was she capable of asking people to sacrifice. In perhaps the book’s most telling passage, she admits she wasn’t honest with the voters.

“Dick DeVos and I both chose not to tell people the things that deep down we both knew to be true: that fixing Michigan was not going to be quick and easy, that our loss of manufacturing jobs was beyond the control of any governor, that we lived in a world that would never again allow high wages for low-skilled work.”

Perhaps understandable, while running for office. But in an utter failure of leadership, she refused to use any of her political capital to do that, even after being re-elected by a landslide.

The book ends with a chapter called “Cracking the Code,” and contains mostly simplistic advice on how to “create American jobs in a Global Economy.” It then asserts that by the time of leaving office, Ms. Granholm had laid the foundation for the state’s turnaround. Not surprisingly, she says the key is “DIY leadership — do it yourself.”

What may seem puzzling is why the former governor felt compelled to write this book. Previous Michigan governors who were far more successful — Soapy Williams, William Milliken, Jim Blanchard, John Engler — never wrote books about their time.

The answer seems to be that it is aimed at a national media audience. The former governor is now an on-air consultant for MSNBC, and it never hurts to raise your visibility. Especially, that is, if you can shape the way your story will be perceived.

* A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future. Public Affairs Books, $27.99

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.

Columns


Susan J. Demas

Homegrown
Media Strategy

July 1, 2011

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie loves to pick a fight — whether it’s with teachers’ unions, Sunday morning talk show hosts, or, I suspect, the clerk at Dunkin Donuts.

Gov. Scott Walker has followed in Christie’s high-profile footprints in Wisconsin — and is routinely greeted by thousands of howling protestors when he shows up to work in the morning. You get the feeling that makes his day.

The guvs’ in-your-face bravado performed for a national audience has made conservative pundits go all gooey inside. They’re on the radar of right-wing goddess Ann Coulter, who whisked into Michigan last week in her trademark tavern-chic maroon sleeveless dress. Although Walker lost man points with her for falling for a liberal reporter impersonating paper towel magnate/libertarian benefactor David Koch, the idea of President Christie still makes her swoon.

Coulter, who famously mused that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh should have obliterated The New York Times instead, wasn’t man enough to face the press at her Americans for Prosperity of Michigan-sponsored event. She skipped her media availability and ditched a meeting with legislative Republicans to boot, dashing their dreams of posting drooling Facebook pics.

But an intrepid MIRS newsletter reporter tracked her down after her book signing and managed to get one question out betwixt her rantings about the evil media always mangling her message. (Republicans good. Democrats satanic. Got in, Annie).

Coulter was asked if she could comment about Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. That caused her to furrow her brow so deeply that she probably had to run out for an emergency shot of Botox before her Kalamazoo appearance.

After a pause, Ms. C declared, “Nope, I have no idea, but he’s a Republican, so I like him!”

That’s probably the exact response the Snyder camp was hoping for. He’s in good with his party and hasn’t fallen into the dreaded RINO (Republican In Name Only) territory, which could set him up for a primary challenge in ’14. But he’s not being lumped in with inflammatory Republicans like Walker or Michele Bachman, who make right-wing hearts go aflutter but drive independent voters away in droves.

The interesting part is that the new governor has pushed through a conservative agenda strikingly similar to his spotlight-loving GOP governor counterparts — huge budget cuts to education and social services, a big business tax cut, end runs around the collective bargaining process for unions and cuts to public worker pay and benefits.

Snyder has even ushered in the new emergency manager legislation giving a single person power to neuter mayors and city councils and shred labor contracts. Naturally, that’s attracted national attention, from Fox News host Sean Hannity slobbering over it to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow hyperventilating over it (while blithely ignoring the facts).

That action alone caused the Sunday talk show bookers to court him endlessly. But Snyder keeps turning them down, rather than feed them the fiery rhetoric Christie, Walker and Texas Gov. Rick Perry live to supply.

So why is this? Some conservative observers smirk that for all Snyder’s campaign-trail chatter blasting “career politicians,” he’s taken to political gamesmanship like a duck to water. He’s managed to check off many items on the right’s wish list while talking a magnanimous tone with the opposition, even in the face of a recall effort.

Snyder just smiles that they’re exercising their rights as citizens. (He’s also keenly aware that there’s about as much chance of the Recall Rick folks collecting 807,000 valid signatures as the Cubs have of winning the World Series this year.)

Sure, Snyder’s poll numbers have fallen fast, but they will likely rebound if the economy does (whether his policies have anything to do with that or not). It doesn’t help that only liberal activists and angry bloggers really hate the guy (and who knows if they even vote).

The governor has calmly staked out the high ground and says he’s just doing the right thing. And it’s hard to hate a nerd. Voters will be more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt even if the economy isn’t as rosy as we’d like, because he seems well-intentioned and awkwardly likeable. As much as I’d like to say people vote on policy, I think we all know that’s not the case.

Tone matters. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan knows this. The Republican superstar has championed a radical budget plan ending Medicare — something that’s gone over with voters like a lead balloon. But he’s just so nice and earnest about it his with puppy-dog blue eyes that he could have some success with a slightly less extreme version.

Now, I’m not willing to declare Rick Snyder a genius — political, evil, or otherwise. It’s too early to tell.

But I do think it’s refreshing that Snyder’s hometown paper isn’t Politico, unlike former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. When Snyder wants to make news, he doesn’t go straight to Meet the Press. He calls The Detroit News — or more often, a press conference, rather than playing favorites with the media.

For Granholm’s last two years in office, she was shamelessly campaigning for a cabinet post — any cabinet post — or, in her wildest dreams, a Supreme Court slot. She was in Washington so much that I hope she bought a condo. Most of the Capitol press corps could only get a cursory response on even the simplest issue from her harried press secretary, as La Granholm was only available for Newsweek and Katie Couric.

And if reporters would dare criticize her (OK, so I did it on a near-weekly basis), you were persona non grata.

When Granholm occasionally showed up in public — in Michigan — or held a media availability, it was a big deal. Waiting around in her ceremonial office for her to glide in for 10 minutes of happy talk on green energy, I always got the feeling that I should have brought roses just to thank her for slumming it with us, the great unwashed Michigan media.

Meanwhile, Snyder is around so much that it’s almost a non-event. Whether it’s at the Small Business Association of Michigan in Lansing or Blossomtime in Benton Harbor, the guv is there and willing to chat with citizens and press alike. He calls routine press conferences on the budget and other key legislation and gives special messages on big issues like education.

The governor deserves a lot of credit for fulfilling his campaign promise of transparency in this regard.

And he and his staff appear to have pretty thick skin for criticism. When Lt. Gov. Brian Calley disagreed with a column I wrote on the administration’s tax hikes, he talked to me face-to-face. I’ve never run into a wall trying to talk to any senior official, in spite of my adorable columns — nor have I heard complaints from any other reporter.

Say whatever you want about Rick Snyder, but he has the guts to face the Michigan public and media. We could do far worse on this front. And we have.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.

Columns

Tim Skubick

Snyder Proving ‘Experts’ Wrong on Budget

April 29, 2011

Let’s see, where is that recipe for crow? Seems like a lot of folks in this town will be eating some in the coming weeks, as the “experts” may be wrong about when the budget will be completed.

Recall that last January, the new governor — on a mission to reinvent the state Capitol culture — started with calling for a May 31deadline for passing all the new spending bills.

May 31? Who was he kidding? The legislature’s track record on finishing a budget on time is replete with abbreviated government shutdowns coupled with some of the ugliest debates in recent memory.

But this was a new governor and a new legislature and, by gum, Mr. Snyder and all the newbies were fixin’ to prove the experts wrong.

Funny thing is that more than three months later, they are well on the way to doing just that — although there are still many in the betting pool with a middle of June or early July prediction instead.

Give the governor credit at this read. He introduced his budget almost a month before it was due, and while it was not “nuclear,” as the lieutenant governor forewarned, it was semi-nuclear in that it made significant changes in where your tax dollars would go.

For awhile it looked like the scrum over the Snyder tax on pensions would surely mean he would miss the May target. The seniors came unglued, lawmakers felt that heat, and the Democrats quickly framed the debate in terms of the governor stealing from the elderly in order to grant a hefty tax break for his pals in the business community.

That back and forth gobbled up a ton of media ink, and the governor was looking pretty inept at lining up his troops. He found the Senate Republicans to be the most problematic, as they bailed on him for proposing a tax that was political suicide.

Then the governor got the message and hatched a compromise with the two GOP legislative leaders that got things moving again toward some key votes this past week.

But that compromise only gave him two votes. With it, he had still not reached the magic 20 votes in the Senate and 56 in the House to turn the tax into reality.

Without it, his budget is not balanced and cannot be finalized — but the optimistic governor will not give up.

Republicans have also broken ranks with the governor on other spending priorities, including the all-important K-12 school aid fund. Whereas other governors have bent over backwards to increase per-pupil aid or at least hold it at the previous year’s level, Mr. Reinvent Michigan called for a $470 cut per kid!

You thought the sniping from the seniors was bad on the pension tax? The education lobby went bonkers. Teachers rallied on the Capitol steps, local superintendents got on the horn to their “favorite” legislator and, presto change-o, the governor’s education budget is taking a nip and a tuck from lawmakers who want to reduce the cut from that $470 level.

But despite all this wrangling, they plod ahead toward the deadline. And while they are certainly capable of botching this all up, the governor may find some glee in fixing that crow for the Capitol press corps to consume on the Capitol steps.

Fried with mushrooms, please.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series Off the Record since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

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Tricky, Tricky
Watch closely now. The “magicians” in Lansing are about to pull a “nothing-up-my-sleeve” trick to make it easier to pass the governor’s wobbly modified pension tax.

In trouble from the get-go, the governor’s so-called compromise on the unpopular tax on retirement checks is not doing much better, which is why the chair of the House Tax Policy committee is taking a back door route to enact it.

Instead of an up or down vote on the merits of the pension tax itself, which could mean almost certain defeat, Rep. Jud Gilbert (R-Algonac) wants to tuck it into the governor’s plan to revamp the Michigan Business Tax.

That means if lawmakers vote yes on the new 6 percent corporate business income levy, they are at the same time automatically approving the pension tax.

So what?

This sleight-of-hand maneuver is designed to give some cover for lawmakers who are antsy about backing the pension concept and fear voter backlash at home.

Here’s how it works. They vote for the business tax, and when constituents complain about the pension tax going on the books, too, lawmakers can say, “I had no choice. We need to revamp the business tax in order to make the economy grow, and, unfortunately, included in the bill was the pension tax. I did not put it there and would have preferred that it not be in there, but what was I to do?” (cue the alligator tears).

Now, there is some chatter that combining the two ideas into one bill may be illegal, but Gilbert does not seem concerned and forges ahead, setting up a possible court challenge if this scheme works.

That’s the risk, but magic is always risky.

Close But No Cigar
Somewhere out there in TV land sits a former Michigan governor who must be saying, “Why didn’t any of this stuff happen to me?”

For eight long and tortuous years, Gov. Jennifer Granholm waited for the illusive economic recovery to arrive on her doorstep. She left office still waiting.

Gov. Rick Snyder has been in office just over 100 days and woke up recently to read that the state’s economic forecasts were low by $500 million, meaning a half-billion dollars appeared out of nowhere.

Here’s why:
General Fund collections: Up $178 million.
School Aid Fund: Up $65 million.
Sales tax collections: Up 37 percent.
Business tax income: Up 26 percent.
Withholding tax revenue: Up $67 million.

It may be premature to sing Happy Days Are Here Again, but the Fat Lady is in rehearsals to do just that.

Whereas the former female governor toiled over how to cut the budget because she had to, the new guy is faced with cutting the budget because he wants to. There will be pressure from lawmakers to use some of the 500 mil to restore cuts to education and other essential programs, but others will argue it should go into the state’s depleted Rainy Day Fund.

It’s the kind of philosophical debate that any governor would be willing to tackle, but here’s the harsh reality which makes politics so unfair. None of this is the result of anything Gov. Rick Snyder has done, but some of it is the result of what she did.

But guess who will get the credit?

Columns

Eric Freedman

Polishing the
Governor’s Image

January 16, 2011

As former governor, Jennifer Granholm gets to decide what her official, privately funded portrait will look like when it hangs in the Capitol between that of her immediate predecessor, John Engler, and G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams. Ferndale artist Charles Pompilius is working on the nearly life-sized painting, but details haven’t been disclosed publicly.

Perhaps Granholm will choose to incorporate symbols of her accomplishments, as Williams did. His portrait includes the Mackinac Bridge — which opened while he was in office — and a globe symbolizing his later public service as assistant secretary of State for African affairs and U.S. ambassador to the Philippines.

Or perhaps she’ll opt for something outré, as did John Swainson. Defeated for re-election in 1962, Swainson’s portrait looks sketchy and incomplete — reflecting his belief that his political career wasn’t over yet. The Senate was outraged enough to pass a resolution to publicly finance a more traditional replacement, a step that never took place. Yet Swainson’s portrayal proved prophetic, and he later won a spot on the state Supreme Court.

Granholm’s official portrait will do little if anything to shape future perceptions of her eight years in office, however.

Rather than counting on a painting — that most visitors to the Capitol are unlikely to see or will barely notice — to accomplish that goal, the Granholm administration, First Gentleman Dan Mulhern and the Democratic Party launched what was arguably the strongest post-election PR drive in the state’s history to buff her image and leave the public with positive vibes about her governorship and legacy.

Lobbying history by polishing the record is common practice for governors of both parties as they prepare to leave office, but Team Granholm did a masterful job. Lots of jobs created or retained? Yup. Unemployed workers retrained with new skills? Yup. A higher minimum wage? Yup. A more diversified, although smaller, economy? Yup. Action on Great Lakes preservation, alternative energy and environmental quality? Yup.

The on-her-way-out governor made her case in a flood of exit interviews with print and broadcast outlets (more than three dozen, by one scribe’s count).

Mulhern also took to the web to laud his wife on his own leadership website. “It would take chapters to discuss all of her strengths, and I’d guess I could spend a few pages on her shortcomings, but here are three dimensions of her leadership practice that inspire me,” he tells readers. If you missed it, here are the high points:

• “Whether they were her own rare but inevitable mis-steps, flubs by her team or simply facing the mind-numbing challenges Michigan faced as a million manufacturing jobs evaporated, Jennifer got up every morning and focused not on who screwed up, self pity, or wishing and hoping, but on what was in her power (and much of which appeared to be beyond her grasp).”
• “She does the personal-emotional side by seeing people, encouraging them and thanking them…Her cabinet and team have been freed and encouraged to ‘enlarge their territory.’”
• “In the early years she wanted to do everything: cities, arts, higher ed, early childhood ed, a massive poverty reduction program, etc., and because she delegated so well her team got much of that done. But she became laser-focused on the core vision: diversification and education for 21st century jobs.”

And for audiovisual reinforcement, Mulhern links to a seven-minute video — “A Living Portrait” of Granholm produced by the foundation that commissioned her portrait.

Not surprisingly, the video features a lengthy list of laudatory comments from Democratic politicians — among them Detroit Mayor David Bing, U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, U.S. Rep. John Dingell and ex-Speaker Andy Dillon — and a quote from President Barack Obama. Also singing paeans of praise are CEOs and other executives of the Detroit 3 automakers, Dow Chemical, Crystal Mountain Resort, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit Medical Center, Charter One Bank, DTE and other businesses. UAW President Bob King provides a labor voice, Wendell Anthony of the Detroit NAACP a civil rights voice and the presidents of Lansing Community College and the state Board of Education an education voice.

The final buffing comes from the narrator: “The people chose a leader who then chose a path.”

Certainly Granholm’s actual record is mixed. A lengthy Associated Press analysis of the self-described “education governor” recounted some successes, such as higher reading and math scores and tougher high school graduation mandates, and she told AP, “We are still No. 2 in the country in terms of the percentage of our budget that is devoted to education.”

That said, there were a number of losses in the education arena, including reduced state support for public universities, elimination of the Michigan Promise college scholarships and shrinking public school enrollments. The state was able to avert severe cuts in state support for K-12 education only because Washington launched a stimulus money life raft.

A Booth Newspapers retrospective concluded that her governorship “shows signs of success” despite setbacks, including advancement of alternative energy technologies and high-tech manufacturing, sharp cuts in the state workforce and tax cuts.

The reality isn’t as rosy. She took office amid an increasingly globalizing economy that was dire news for Michigan manufacturing — and not just automakers — and left office with Michigan and California tied with the nation’s highest jobless rate. She inherited a massive structural deficit from Engler and in turn bequeathed an even more massive one to incoming Gov. Rick Snyder. Michigan became the only state to lose population between the 2000 and 2010 censuses and will lose a U.S. House seat in 2012.

None of those are her fault, of course. Governors have no control over world economic trends, they don’t have the power to create private-sector jobs and they can’t send the National Guard to the Ohio, Indiana or Wisconsin borders to block outbound moving vans.

On a mega-level, would things have been different had either former Governor James Blanchard or then-U.S. Rep. David Bonier won the 2002 Democratic nomination instead of Granholm and then beat the GOP candidates in the November 2002 and November 2006 general elections? And how different would things have been, again on a mega-level — the implosion of manufacturing, the outflow of population, the shriveling of revenue — if Republicans Dick Posthumus had defeated Granholm in 2002 or Dick DeVos defeated her in 2006?

And Granholm certainly confronted plenty of legislative resistance, even overt hostility. There were eight years of a conservative GOP-controlled Senate, four years of a conservative GOP-dominated House and four years of a divided and increasingly partisan legislature.

She spent much of her final two months handling routine end-of-session chores — wrangling with legislative leaders over matters fiscal, pardoning some crooks and commuting the sentences of others, announcing grants and appointments and watching key cabinet members leave for greener pastures. She signed lots of bills — 166 in December alone, ranging from big-ticket items like $968 million for capital projects and $20 million for the Pure Michigan tourism campaign to many of lesser import, such as restrictions on billboards for sexually oriented businesses.

She even dared incur the anger of some environmental scientists by moving Michigan a step closer to a moose-hunting season in the Upper Peninsula. She wielded her veto pen as well, rebuffing a freight trucking exemption in the Michigan Business Tax, among several other ill-fated bills. And she found time to refer the public to a new state website about the perils of improperly installed propane gas systems.

Nor did she go gentle into that good night, as the poet Dylan Thomas put it. Consider the 11th-hour verbal scuffle with Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, whom she accused of “fanning the flames of division” by worsening relations between Detroit and its suburbs. The outspokenly acerbic Patterson retorted that Granholm was “the worst governor” in state history.

No date is set for the unveiling of Granholm’s official portrait on the second floor of the Capitol Rotunda. To make room for it, the portrait of one-term Republican Kim Sigler will be moved to the third floor — the upper level of the building’s Gallery of Governors, says Kerry Chartkoff, the Capitol historian.

Sigler lost the governorship more than 60 years ago and is little remembered, except by some Michigan history buffs. But his portrait still gives knowledgeable passers-by something bizarre to ponder: The small airplane in the lower right corner of the painting is the one Sigler was piloting when it crashed into a television tower near Kalamazoo. Three passengers died with him.

Talk about a lasting image.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Eric Freedman is associate professor of journalism at Michigan State University and director of Capital News Service. He and Dome columnist Stephen A. Jones are editors of African Americans in Congress: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press).

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

Opportunity Squandered

December 31, 2010

Eight years ago, there was a great deal of excitement across Michigan about the state’s first woman governor.

Jennifer Granholm, the state’s 44-year-old attorney general, was seen as brilliant, attractive and dynamic. An often spellbinding speaker, she had easily vanquished two far-better-known male opponents in the Democratic primary that summer.

Then she defeated a fairly colorless Republican, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus, in the November election.

Hard to remember now, but people were so revved up by her election that one Detroit newspaper columnist seriously suggested people might want to change the U.S. Constitution so that the Canadian-born Granholm could run for president.

What a difference eight years make.

Four years after she was re-elected by a landslide, Democrats suffered their worst statewide defeat since the 1940s. Every Democrat who ran for statewide office was defeated, most badly. Nearly twice as many voters disapproved of Granholm’s performance in office as approved.

Bill Ballenger, a longtime Lansing insider who publishes the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, at one point said she was the least effective governor since the half-forgotten John Swainson.

Later, he said that comparison may have been unfair to the late Swainson. Before the end of Jennifer Granholm’s term, even some of her fellow Democrats — including Speaker of the House Andy Dillon — scarcely bothered to hide their disdain.

When asked about her leadership style, they used words like weak, vacillating, indecisive and ineffectual.

Ironically, the public anger at the outgoing governor seemed largely to be about issues over which she had no control: mainly, the economy. Jennifer Granholm was not responsible for the national recession or the near-total collapse of the auto industry in 2008.

Neither she nor her policies were the cause of the more than 600,000 Michigan jobs that disappeared during her time in office.

Where the governor failed, however, was in the one area where everyone thought she would excel — leadership.

She never really articulated a theme for her administration. Nor did she seem able to take bold or unpopular stands, or, on the rare occasions that she did, could she stick to her guns.

What may be most baffling — and to some, most inexcusable — is the opportunity she squandered after the triumphant re-election.

After her huge victory over Amway heir Dick DeVos in 2006, she had enormous political capital — and no reason not to spend it.

Consider this: Granholm was effectively done in electoral politics. She was constitutionally prevented from running for president or vice president. Both of Michigan’s sitting U.S. senators are Democrats who have no intention of leaving soon. There was no reason not to risk unpopularity.

What might she have done? Oddly, the “first gentleman,” Dan Mulhern, asked me to have dinner with him right after his wife had been re-elected. He said that state government was really in a mess, and it was clear that I understood that.

He said they wanted my advice. I was taken a little aback, but said something like this: there’s nobody better at directly communicating with the voters than Jennifer Granholm. She should take a half hour of television time to lay it all out for the citizens.

Sort of a modern “fireside chat.” Tell the citizens where the state really stands. Tell them how this massive “structural deficit” evolved, and that none of the politicians has been completely honest with them. Then tell them what has to happen now, that it will cost them, but that Michigan has to be fixed so this state and their children and grandchildren can have a future. Then launch a campaign designed to get the public and the legislature behind you.

But Mulhern said, “Well, we thought we might do something like that in the State of the State speech.”

I told him that almost nobody paid attention to any governor’s annual state of the state except the reporters who have to cover it.

In the end, Granholm didn’t even use the speech. Timidly, she instead had her budget director offer a proposal to extend the sales tax to services. The legislature ignored it.

With the passing of years, the governor became less and less relevant to the process. She kept busy running around the globe, bringing promises of a few handfuls of jobs.

But she never tried to achieve any of the sweeping, massive changes state government needs. When she put forth a controversial proposal to consolidate government departments, she ran away from her own idea almost the moment it met resistance.

In the end, a career that held so much promise ended almost in parody. Early on, she proclaimed that in five years, people would be “blown away” by the strength and diversity of the Michigan economy.

But when the years passed, hundreds of thousands of workers had indeed been blown away, to look for work in other states.

To the last, the governor insisted that her legacy would shine, that she would be remembered for “laying the groundwork for the economy of the future.” Time will tell if she was right.

But for now, she seems more likely to be remembered as the governor whose boldest move was ignoring a tradition going back to 1849 and abolishing the time-honored Michigan State Fair.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.

Columns



Tim Skubick

Civil Disagreement

December 24, 2010

The transition of power from one governor to another is always a hoot. It can go either way.

When John Engler beat Jim Blanchard there was tension. Not in your wildest dreams would you have expected Mr. Engler to do what the current governor and incoming governor did: decide to share appointments to a critical state agency.

Note that Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Gov-elect Rick Snyder did not have to do this. The 20 members of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation tendered their resignations, which gave the new governor a chance to install all of the replacements…all of them.

But instead these two decided to divvy them up.

“This is unusual,” the current governor observed. In vintage Snyder-speak he added, “It was a good team effort.”

Renewed bipartisanship is all the rage in this town, as the new governor is all about working with the other party. The current governor wanted to do that, too, and claims she got 80 percent of what she wanted from the Republicans in the legislature — yet there is the lingering feeling that she never really hit it off with GOP Senate leader Mike Bishop and House Speaker Andy Dillon, a Democrat.

She has hit it off with Mr. Snyder, a Republican.

But then in the midst of all this cooperation, came some disagreements, thanks to a news media that cannot stomach large doses of goodwill, even at this time of the year.

Please note, however, that the two disagreed in an agreeable manner, which is consistent with both their personalities and styles.

Mr. Snyder was careful when the discussion turned to her record of providing jobs. He respectfully noted that there were signs of progress. Now, he could have said: “She tried, but didn’t get it done” or “There was some job growth, but I can do better.” He did neither.

Instead, he politely told the media, “We need to pick up the pace.” She stood by his side and let it slide without a rebuttal.

But there were two other questions where they agreed to disagree and she did step in.

Issue one: how to attract jobs to the state.

Mr. Snyder is a gardener not a hunter. That means he wants to focus on cultivating new jobs from the companies that are already inside our borders, and he would not spend a ton of energy on hunting for jobs beyond the state line.

She tiptoed into the disagreement with, “I don’t want to speak for you, but I think we should do both.” He kept quiet.

Issue two: in every exit interview she has noted the creation of 650,000 jobs, and even though she lost more jobs on her watch than she created, she wants that legacy.

So the question was, “Has Michigan’s economy hit the bottom?”

He noted advances on the auto front, but “in terms of believing, it will take some time to know…In terms of Michigan being out of the woods, we have a lot of hard work to do.”

She could not let that one slide, but again was careful to preface her remarks with the suggestion that he didn’t answer the question that was asked. “We have bottomed out,” she said, beginning her defense of her eight years in office.

He did not take the bait.

Before they left, she touched his shoulder and congratulated him on his “spirit of bipartisanship” and predicted it would serve him well in the next four years. And then she laughed and added, “We hope.”

On that they did agree.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series Off the Record since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

Tim Skubick Extra Extra…
(A weekly bonus only for Dome readers)

One and Counting
It’s pretty amazing that this guy is getting any media coverage. After all, he has no money, no organization, no political connections, and some unkind louts would say he has no brain either.

The other stuff is true, but Steve Harry does have some gray matter and he’s on a one-man crusade to put it to good use by abolishing the Michigan Senate, abolishing term limits, abolishing collective bargaining for public employees and converting the union-dominated state into a Right-to-Work state and gut the union movement big time.

Harry wants to launch four petition drives and recently appeared before a state election agency to get approval of his petition forms.

That’s the easy part and it didn’t cost him a dime. Isn’t state government grand?

Now all he needs is about $2-3 million, by his own estimate. He’s probably short about a mil or so, but who’s counting?

“I think by April we can come up with the money,” he says optimistically while trying to convince the doubters that maybe he doesn’t need a brain transplant.

“I can’t do this alone,” he confesses in the understatement of the month.

Yep. He will need help, and he hopes to drill a successful hole by asking the Tea Party folks to join in the fun.

“I will talk to them,” he suggests.

Now all he needs is about 400,000 signatures to put these four reforms on the statewide ballot. And if he gets those, he’ll need another couple bucks to sell them to the voters.

Mr. Harry is a former state worker ready to do his part to revamp the government.

Maybe he could get the Nerd to help out. Ya know, hold some town hall meetings, draft a four-point-plan and then hope Virg Bernero gets angry again and comes out against it.

From Beehive to Hornet’s Nest
The Utah budget director turned in the new state budget there recently. Now the fun begins: writing one for Michigan.

John Nixon, sans family for the time being, is saying good-bye to the Beehive state and transplanting himself smack dab in the middle of a hornet’s nest of a budget mess.

Tapped by the governor-elect to figure out a way to swim out of $1.6 billion of red ink, Mr. Nixon will find no quick fixes.

Ask Jim Curran.

Mr. Curran recently co-chaired one of those study commissions to uncover ways to squeeze more savings out of the state government machine. The group produced a report, and Mr. Nixon wants to chat with Curran about it. When they do, it could go like this:

“Mr. Nixon, welcome to Michigan…I think.”

“Thanks, Mr. Curran. I’ve been getting a lot of that lately. So let me begin. I want to impress Gov. Snyder, so give me the quick fixes first.”

“I’m not sure I’m prepared to answer that one,” Curran will say, because he used those exact words in an interview the other day.

Undaunted, Mr. Nixon may then ask, “Give me the easiest places to find new dollars.”

And again Mr. Curran will say, as he did in the interview, “I’m sorry, I really can’t answer that.”

“There are no easy answers,” Mr. C. continues, stating the obvious. Those were used up years ago by other budget cutters.

He adds that it’s like the dog chasing the car and catching it. He barks, “What do I do now?”

Welcome, Mr. Nixon. What the heck are you going to do now?

Columns
John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service

No Dickensian Ghosts
to Haunt Granholm

December 10, 2010

In this holiday season it is tempting to draw a Dickensian parallel with the current fight in Washington, D.C., over taxes and Governor Jennifer Granholm’s defense of the agreement President Barack Obama made with Republicans.

Doing so, though, might ignore the cynical view that Ms. Granholm’s defense of the proposal plays into future job prospects for her in the Obama administration.

But there is, in fact, a kind of Dickensian connection for Ms. Granholm, not because of the holidays, since that happens to be an accident of the calendar, but because of a primary motivation of her administration.

Now on her farewell tour, these last weeks have finally brought some good news for the embattled Ms. Granholm. And she is enjoying the full benefit of those developments while she can.

Michigan has had one of the stronger rebounds as the nation’s still weak economy struggles to its feet. That may be small comfort to the thousands of Michiganders still needing work, but it is something one can draw hope from.

Ms. Granholm has been a frequent guest at major announcements by the state’s automakers, most recently with Chrysler announcing it was keeping open its Sterling Heights plant. The rebound in autos is refreshing given that the industry was on its death bed just two years ago.

It is also ironic. Michigan’s economy collapsed because autos collapsed. Michigan can only see major job growth in the short term with the auto industry recovering. But the industry recovering also raises the specter of state residents and leaders growing too dependent on autos and too complacent, meaning the next downturn will have another disastrous impact.

Every governor since William Milliken has made diversifying Michigan’s economy a keystone of his or her administration. None has done so with more force than Ms. Granholm. Then again, did she have any choice? Every governor before her had a period of economic growth, a breathing space in which to praise Michigan industry, especially the auto industry.

Ms. Granholm never had a breather. Her administration was a non-stop race against economic disaster, a struggle to keep the budget balanced on the one hand and to rebuild the economy on the other.

Which makes another event in her last weeks in office extremely important: that of the announcement of a major wind farm development in the Upper Peninsula. It wasn’t just that the farm was coming into place, it was that the turbines on the farm would use a potentially major breakthrough in wind electric generation.

Developing alternative energy is Ms. Granholm’s ace card. No matter that almost all governors have called for developing alternative energy as keys to their economic development plans, Ms. Granholm has tied alternative energy to the state’s existing manufacturing infrastructure as one way to a brighter future. So a wind farm on the Garden Peninsula was a bit of a bounty she harvested.

Moreover, she took a big step in promoting what will surely be a controversial policy: putting wind turbines in the Great Lakes. Not everywhere, to be sure. But if Michigan is going to be a player in alternative energy she understood it needs to strike out into, ahem, unchartered waters.

Moving aside from purely economic news there are other indications some policies Ms. Granholm pushed are having their intended effect. Education was always a major focus of her administration. Economic woes meant ongoing struggles in terms of financing. In the critical area of higher education, Ms. Granholm pushed for more residents to attend college, but then never took a lead in pushing for more money for universities. That alone has made her unpopular with the state’s university community.

But recent polls indicate Michigan residents recognize now how important it is for them to have more education. Most likely they learned that the hard way through the economy and not through Ms. Granholm’s pitch. But it is one more sign her policies could be working.

More striking were comments made recently by college professors to this reporter that fewer Michigan students need remedial classes when they enter college. That is a sign that the stringent curriculum enacted under Ms. Granholm is starting to work. Students better prepared for college mean they can better focus on the studies that will help them prepare for future careers.

While Ms. Granholm may be enjoying her final weeks, those who care about such things are focusing more on what she will do when she leaves office. If she has an idea she has said nothing. Her husband, Dan Mulhern, hinted recently they may stay in the Lansing area while son Jack finishes high school.

Because she has been such a popular fixture on national television, there has been speculation a group like MSNBC might want her to serve as the Democratic, liberal foil to Fox television’s former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Ah, but what about Mr. Obama’s administration (we didn’t forget that’s how this started), could Ms. Granholm finally be tapped for that place?

While she endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Ms. Granholm has been a loyal proponent of the president. For all that loyalty she has been left at the presidential altar fairly often.

Asked after the 2008 election if she would join the administration, Ms. Granholm made appropriate vague comments leading reporters to conclude she was in talks with Mr. Obama. Summoned to the president-elect’s meeting of economic leaders in Chicago, she stood behind him at the press conference. Her picture was everywhere. There could be no clearer signal she was going to Washington.

But she didn’t. She wasn’t asked.

Then she was on the short list for the U.S. Supreme Court. The FBI came to town investigating her background. It seemed to come down to Ms. Granholm and Sonia Sotamayor.

And Ms. Granholm is still governor, for a few weeks yet.

Ah, but now there is speculation the new Republican Congress will soon have the head of U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. He is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, not a politician, and the thinking goes he won’t have the stomach to face off against the GOP, which will challenge everything the administration says or does. In that case, wouldn’t it be better to have someone who has faced off against Republicans and also supports aggressive energy policy in the post?

So Ms. Granholm’s name has come forward again. There is no actual job she is in line for, but her name is on everyone’s lips.

The White House is also making use of her. No sooner did Mr. Obama reach agreement on a deal on taxes and unemployment benefits than Democrats began blasting it. Not Ms. Granholm. She quickly and loudly praised the agreement, and Mr. Obama as a practical leader. The administration has responded by having her take a leading role in selling the deal to Democrats and the public.

Of course, she is going to support the plan, say some. If she is going to be named by Mr. Obama she is of course going to support his proposal.

Yes, indeed. It is not likely she would be appointed if she were slamming the president at this point.

But the comments miss a larger point, a basic motivation that has driven Ms. Granholm throughout her term.

When she first took office, one of Ms. Granholm’s first goals was to not hurt people. Democrats believed the Engler administration made its gains by hurting innocent people. His administration was seen as too willing to cut those at the bottom instead of asking more from those at the top.

Throughout her administration Ms. Granholm has tried to find ways to balance the books while causing the least amount of harm. Her initial town hall meetings were to find out from the public what were their budget priorities, and those priorities did not want to harm others either, and she has kept to those. In making major policies that might move the state faster to a new economic path, she has been cautious, perhaps too cautious, in large part because she did not want to hurt people.

The course she followed to sail the state to a new economy focused on helping those suffering. So her tax policy has neither been as aggressive as Republicans wanted in terms of cutting, nor as aggressive as some Democrats wanted in terms of raising money. She has sought a middle path to keep services at a reasonable level to not hurt those needing them, while not raising costs too far on those who would move out of the state.

There’s no question Ms. Granholm thinks the rich could handle a tax increase. But her focus in the debate has been on unemployment benefits, on making sure people with no other means had help. That to her is more important than whether the rich had more money for charitable deductions to lower their taxes further (which, frankly, is what the rich tend to do with tax savings of the sort the Bush cuts amount to).

So it is a Dickensian attitude she has. If Ayn Rand’s hero is the renegade business leader John Galt, with his peculiar business attitude of “We don’t need anyone,” then in many regards Dickens’ heroes are people like the Cheeryble Brothers in “Nicholas Nickleby,” businessmen who are enriched by giving more to their workers and to those who need help. Help those at the bottom, she feels, and those at the top will be helped as well.

It’s doubtful Ms. Granholm used Dickens as a guiding political philosopher, but as she leaves office in winter she need not worry about the ghosts of her conscience haunting her.

John Lindstrom is publisher of Gongwer News Service. For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.

Columns


John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service

Days of Wine and Losses

December 3, 2010

Now in the last month of Governor Jennifer Granholm’s administration, in the days before Governor-elect Rick Snyder takes office, Capitol insiders believe it is a good thing Mr. Snyder’s personal manse has a wine-tasting room. Because he’s gonna need it.

And should in the first days of his administration Mr. Snyder decide to actually stay in the executive residence, he should trust the staff will be happy to point out the small but tasteful bar off the living room.

Mr. Snyder is excited about coming into office, as he has said and his staff have repeated. He has named some top people to top posts. He has already implemented a business model for reorganizing the cabinet that relies effectively on executive directors (he calls them group directors).

Nothing wrong with any of that. Michigan needs an enthusiastic leader, one ready and excited to handle the tasks ahead. Michigan needs top people to implement the policies and changes the state will have to endure. And why not try the same approach that great companies have used in terms of organization? Didn’t necessarily stop General Motors from slamming into the wall, but why not give it a go?

It may be churlish to remind Mr. Snyder (as this reporter was recently reminded by a colleague) of Mark Twain’s comment that all is needed in life is “ignorance and confidence, then success is assured.” But then, ’tis the season to be churlish — ask Scrooge and the Grinch.

Better to remind Mr. Snyder of advice that former President Jimmy Carter gave Bill Clinton as the Arkansan was readying to swear the oath: “throw out your agenda.”

What Capitol insiders have said in the last several weeks is that Mr. Snyder faces a headbutt with a reality he does not yet seem to have completely grasped.

Make no mistake: everyone wishes him well, all wish him great success. No matter what their political background and who they supported in November, they all hope and pray Mr. Snyder will succeed. This is not a state and these are not people so partisan and bitter they hope anyone fails. This is a state and these are people who have seen too much struggle, too much pain, to wish anything but success to whomever was brave enough or dumb enough to be governor.

But…well…how to put this? Look, to a group of a reporters this week a top association executive asked honestly and without a trace of cynicism if Mr. Snyder were not naïve?

Look as well at John Nixon, the Utah budget director named to be Michigan’s budget director. He is a top-rated official nationally. Mr. Snyder’s staff is quite literally giggling with excitement over the appointment.

But after meeting with Mr. Nixon, a top state budget official said: “He’s not ready. He has no idea what he is walking into.” Oh, he’s smart, the official said of Mr. Nixon. He’ll be able to do the job, once he really grasps what will be involved.

Utah had budget problems, the official was reminded, its leaders had to make budget cuts. They put all their state workers on a four-day week.

“They had one year of cuts,” the official sniffed. “We’ve had 10 years of cuts.” Utah’s economy never tanked as did Michigan’s, the official said. Its essential economy was never stripped raw and left staggering as Michigan’s was. It has not had to rebuild not only its economy but its essential culture. “It is so much more complicated here,” the official said.

That complication was borne out by the “mystery document” that surfaced this week, a list of suggested budget cuts that could strip nearly $3 billion from the general fund. Who developed the document, and to what end, is still at this point a mystery. Clearly, however, it was a person or persons who understood the details of the budget.

Reading through it, though, points out the layers of services that the public has come to expect and who may not yet be ready to do without.

The budget terror many are experiencing has already been noted. That state government will get smaller is understood. But the mystery document made more plain how extensive and painful those changes and cuts could be.

Eliminating the adolescent health clinic at Mumford High School may not raise many hackles. It is one proposal in the document. Closing the clinic on Mackinac Island, another proposal, could be much more complicated.

Eliminating statutory revenue sharing? The document says it could save some $450 million, but does anyone think that would go over well, if at all?

And the document also proposes privatizing the University of Michigan. Mr. Snyder has three degrees from that school. Is it likely he would embrace the idea? Maybe, but not really likely.

So the first headbutt that could send Mr. Snyder to opening a full-bodied cabernet quickly is the realization this task will be much harder than he or anyone really thought.

The second reality Mr. Snyder must take into account is best reflected in something legend has it former President Dwight Eisenhower once said. Asked what the difference between being president and being a general was, Ike reportedly said: “When I was a general and told someone to do something, they did it.”

Mr. Snyder comes to office as a corporate executive. He knows what it is to sign the front of a check and knows the overpowering drive that has to get people to do things.

He loses that advantage as governor. He may be chief executive, but the legislature is his equal. It may be a Republican legislature, but it can still tell Mr. Snyder to take a hike. And it will, at some point.

Mr. Snyder will still be able to issue orders and see people fulfill them, but he will not be able to order the legislature to do anything. Now, he will have to use his negotiating skills even with his allies, and he may find talking to his enemies easier.

So ready a second bottle for the governor-elect. A nice pinot will smooth out some of the rough edge of the cabernet.

Finally, at least for this column, is the fact that no matter what Mr. Snyder wants to do, reality will interfere.

How will he respond to his first crisis? To a prison break, or a scandal involving childcare, or an economy that collapses against all odds again?

Or to a very large employer who, employing the same type of metrics Mr. Snyder has used through his career, says it is going to leave the state? It was the same sort of crisis that forced both former Governor John Engler and Ms. Granholm to change their paths.

Mr. Snyder has built a positive message and proud plan, he is assembling a top team, and yet, does he yet understand that he will fail? If he is very lucky he’ll only fail 25 percent of the time. If he is lucky on average, he will only fail about 50 percent of the time.

It is how he rebounds from the inevitable failure, the failure everyone who wants him to succeed knows he will have, that will in the end define what his true successes will be.

So, until Mr. Snyder decides the long commute is getting old, at least during the week, one suggests that to his wine tasting room he add a healthy supply of scotch and brandy. A restorative nip will be called for, governor-elect, probably often.

John Lindstrom is publisher of Gongwer News Service. For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.