Looking back at a state on the verge of disaster

Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm and herhusband, Dan Mulhern, are on a mission to warn the rest of the countryabout Michigan’s economic experiences and how to escape disaster.

“Everything that is hitting the countryhit Michigan first,” Granholm said in an interview, referring to theeconomic maelstrom she faced during her two terms as Michigan’sgovernor.

“Our problems weren’t cyclical, they were structural,” she said. “Our experiences are prophetic.”

The couple is on the road promotingtheir new book, “A Governor’s Story: A Fight for Jobs and America’sEconomic Future.” The book is on sale this week, and Granholm andMulhern will make their first public appearance in Michigan at 7:30p.m. Tuesday at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor. According to theirpublicist, Liz Boyd (the governor’s former press secretary), they areattempting to schedule a Lansing area event.

A lesson in economics: It’s $10 for admission to the Ann Arbor event, but for $25, you get a ticket for admission and the book.

Before then, if you pick up a newspaper,listen to the radio or watch TV, it’s likely you will catch Granholm,who has an enviable schedule of media events, including “The DailyShow,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” “Meet the Press” and “Countdownwith Keith Olbermann.” (You can listen to City Pulse columnist’s KyleMelinn’s interview with the couple on City Pulse On the Air, heard at 7p.m. tonight on 88.9 FM, The Impact.)

The new book is hard to categorize sinceit’s not a traditional political memoir or a biography. Although it’swritten in the first person, the first couple underscore that it’swritten jointly. Granholm and Mulhern share equal billing on the dustjacket, which shows Granholm in a power pose you’d likely find on thecover of Fortune magazine.

Granholm calls the book a “hybrid” sinceit only covers a short time (roughly from December 2008 to June 2009)when she was thrown into national spotlight as the U.S. auto industrywas taken to the brink of bankruptcy.

Wrapped around this period is enoughverbiage to give you a sense of this unusual couple — unusual in thesense that Mulhern became the primary parent for the couple’s threechildren while Granholm would be completely engulfed in what she calls“a global economic hurricane,” which she says is “coming to a communitynear you.”

Very early in the book you see thefrustration that confronted Granholm. At the bottom of a schematictimeline is the simple line: “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

No, it wasn’t. In their writing, theymake it clear that, at first, Mulhern was the one with the ambition anddesire to seek elected office; when his spouse becomes the first womanelected as governor of Michigan that dream ends. He throws himself intothe role of "uberparent," who provides emotional support for his spouse.

Granholm, on the other hand, is tossedinto a sea of trouble with no lifeboat. She calls it “playing defense”while she wanted to play offense. 

She writes: “Life in the governor’schair quickly turned out to be less about enacting my agenda and moreabout managing a cascading series of crises.”

The book details the massiveunemployment and plant closures and the governor’s attempts to turn theeconomy around using traditional means like tax cuts, reducing the sizeof government and cutting regulation. They make it clear in the bookthat none of that worked and that states alone cannot change the impactof global competition.

The book makes the case that the actionswere futile until President Obama was elected and began makingstrategic investments in industry, such as new energy sources. Thesuccess of those programs is detailed in a chapter titled “Greenshoots.”

That’s the message the writers hope toemphasize to the rest of the nation; they write about it in detail inthe chapter “Cracking the Code,” the title of which refers to eightstrategies Granholm proposes that would “create advanced manufacturingjobs” and change the way America does business in the global economy.

Although the book is somewhat chatty attimes, it really takes off when Granholm is embroiled in rescuing theU.S auto industry. The behind-the-scenes look paints a dramatic pictureof the tense moments leading up to actions that pulled the autoindustry — and Michigan — back from the brink. 

Granholm and Mulhern do a good job inrecreating the drama of that time, in which a single phone call mayhave determined the fate of Michigan.

Granholm describes the moment in her interview as “such a scary time for all of us. So many people were hanging by threads.”

Interspersed throughout the book aredepictions of the personal toll the pressures of the job have taken onGranholm and Mulhern.

“We worked really hard to be candid about our personal reinvention,” Mulhern said.

One scene has Granholm running along aforest path on Mackinac Island while she reflects on the impact thatpublic life has had on her personal relationships.

“There was no doubt in my mind that theperson most challenged by my 10 years in public life was Dan," shewrites. “(T)here was a slow burning resentment in him: My preoccupationwith all things Michigan had made him feel that he’d given up both thewife and the life he expected.”

She also reflects on how her pro-choicestand had left him “persona non grata with a Catholic bureaucracy” anddescribes being “ambivalent about attending church” after their bishoptells her she “was not worthy to receive communion.”

She writes how Mulhern accepted his roleand flourished, while she had an epiphany that “I would not be able tocarry Michigan on my back to the victory circle.  … I had to be okay with that. And I was.”

The book, written so soon after her termended, presents a raw look at a time when Michigan’s economic futurewas on the precipice and provides what is likely to be a more realisticappraisal than one written 20 years from now.

“I would love to, in a few years, writeanother chapter on the intervention (of the federal government),”Granholm said. “It could be a story with a happy ending.”

Jennifer Granholm and Dan Mulhern

7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27

Michigan Theatre,

603 E. Liberty St.,

Ann Arbor

$10 event; $15 VIP seating; $25 event and a copy of "A Governor’s Story:  Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future"

Tickets available at www.ticketweb.com

(734) 668-8397