Guess what. It won’t be, of course. My guess is that the number of people who actually watch the speech will compare unfavorably with those who watch old episodes of Law and Order recorded inside their T Vs, thanks to the magic of DVR.
People like me will hear the speech of course, but the odds are that even we won’t remember a word of it a year from now. Over the last thirty-some years, I have listened to dozens of state of the state and state of the union speeches. The only line that I can easily remember from any is honest old President Gerald Ford telling us, after the nightmare of Watergate, that “the state of the union is not good.”
More recently, many of us recall the moment that has come back to haunt our present governor, when she told us that we’d be so prosperous that we would be “blown away.”
Now, thanks to term limits, we know this state of the state will be her last. Most of the experts expect her to use this speech to sum up her record - in a favorable way, of course - and “define her legacy,” whatever that means.
Well, if she does try to do that, she will be making a mistake. We won’t really know her true legacy for some years, and in the final analysis, she won‘t be the one who defines it. Historians, political scientists and the court of public opinion will.
Not the governor herself. Bill Milliken was governor for fourteen years and John Engler for twelve. They may have tried to sum up their records in their last state of the states.
But if so, nobody remembers what they said.
What we do remember is what they did. Yesterday, Liz Boyd, Jennifer Granholm’s long-serving press secretary, said the governor would, “focus tonight on her priorities, job creation and economic diversity, educating citizens and protecting them.”
Well, that’s justifiable, except that if she does, nobody, including the people in the chamber, will remember anything she said three days from now. What she needs to do is shock us.
Our present system of government is failing. You can see proof in the legislature‘s repeated failure to balance the budget, adequately fund education, and fix the Michigan Business Tax.
Governor Granholm has a year left to try to fix things. What she needs to do is tell us, frankly and candidly, that the state of the state is not good. She needs to lay out how bad things are and shoulder her share of blame. Then, she should announce a plan to fix it.
She can’t fix the economy by herself. What she and the legislature can do, however, is leave our state in a better position to cope with whatever the world throws at us.
Last week, the governor looked more like a leader than at any time in the previous seven years, laying out a bold new plan to restructure state government and embracing a constitutional convention. Let’s hope the leadership continues tonight.
We might remember it, if Andy Dillon gave the rebuttal address, following the Governor's address.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 03, 2010 at 04:15 PM
My only wish that as the economics of her vaunted wind power and movie subsidies become apparent that someone will have her “You’ll be Blown away” line will be engraved under her official portrait along with “And we were”.
Posted by: Matt | February 04, 2010 at 11:57 AM