Who, me? "Not with any seriousness."
A delicate dance begins early, just a month and a half after Michigan voters picked a dynamic 47-year-old Democrat to replace the two-term Republican governor.
With two weeks to go before she's sworn in, Gretchen Whitmer tiptoes gingerly around a question about any prospect of a national campaign.
Who, me? "Not with any seriousness."
(Facebook photo)
Susan J. Demas, editor-in-chief of a new public affairs news site called Michigan Advance, asks: "Has anyone approached you about being a potential presidential or vice presidential candidate in 2020, given your 2018 performance and the importance of Michigan in the Electoral College?"
Whitmer: Not with any seriousness.
Michigan Advance: Is it anything that you are interested in?
Whitmer: No.
That may sound definitive, but notice the careful choreography.
Saying a possible candidacy hasn't been discussed "with any seriousness" acknowledges the topic is in play. And voicing current disinterest stops shy of ruling out a national campaign.
The prospect arises for a valid reason: Michigan's telegenic governor-elect won her seat by 9 percentage points in a state that Donald Trump carried two years ago. Her victory margin is the largest for a non-incumbent Democratic gubernatorial nominee here in 86 years.
"She went up against a star of the Republican establishment who'd tried to wrap himself around Trump," Edward-Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic wrote last month under the headline "How the Democrats Took Back Michigan."
So Whitmer leaves wide room between not now and who knows as she gracefully sidesteps a definitive reply to a flattering question.
-- Alan Stamm
