LANSING – When Gov. Jennifer Granholm delivers her final State of the State address to the Legislature and a live television audience, she will face the challenge of meshing her proposals for 2010, framing her legacy and expressing gratitude to her family and staff, said Gleaves Whitney, former Governor John Engler’s long-time speechwriter.
“A farewell address is a unique genre,” said Whitney, who worked with Engler for 11 years while he was in office and for six months afterward, helping him settle out of public life. “It gives the leader the opportunity to say thank you for serving and to say thank you to those who served along with you and to the family members that stood by you through all of the long days and campaigning and disruptions.”
Whitney spoke with Gongwer News Service as part of Gongwer’s “Catching Up With” feature with interviews of notable former Capitol figures.
Whitney, now the director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University, said the governor gets the opportunity to be “visionary with a little flavor of an inaugural address without the political bite.”
“This is where the governor says in all humility, ‘There is a lot that has been done, but so much that needs to be done, because we love the state, politics aside, this is what we need for the state to flourish,'” Whitney said. “Usually governors know where they would like to land (politically) so they keep one eye open, but truly it is an opportunity for them to be candid and say things they couldn’t say while they were the party leader and hopefully they will take the opportunity.”
He said governors want people to look kindly on their legacy, and they hopefully can use the final State of the State to encourage such views.
As for Granholm’s legacy, “her leadership now will be important to establishing the right tone for the next governor and her willingness to set that tone and be positive is important for the state to move on.”
He said he doesn’t know what she will say because he “wouldn’t presume to put words in her speechwriters’ mouths and will respect the process (of speechwriting).”
While the governor is an excellent communicator, Whitney said she may experience barriers to communicating her message and leaving a strong note of hope behind her.
Those barriers include the frustration of continued unemployment, the migration of people from the state, especially young, highly skilled people, and most of all: cynicism.
“Cynicism is corrosive,” said Whitney.
Whitney said that he helped Engler craft his twelfth and final State of the State, which he began preparing for in November 2001, and knew would be his legacy address, so he worked especially hard on that speech, and “covered his bases effectively.”
“It was, however, an extremely emotional speech,” said Whitney, who counts Engler not only as the best boss as he’s ever had, but as the one of the best people he’s ever known and certainly the person he learned the most from.
The speech was hard for the former governor him to get through as he looked out into the audience and saw people who he served in public office with “all the way from the beginning,” some for three decades or more in the Legislature and other offices, Whitney said.
He also had trouble watching the faces of his family, his wife Michelle and three daughters, who were sitting in the front row, Whitney said. It was the first State of the State speech Engler’s daughters attended.
“They had sacrificed so much so he could be in public service,” he said. “There were several times in which Engler got choked up during his State of the State. I ran into then-gubernatorial Chief of Staff Sharon Rothwell, and I remember her saying, ‘Thank goodness it was his only farewell speech because he couldn’t do another one. It would take too much out of him.'”
Indeed, several times during the speech, Engler had to cup his hands over his mouth to restrain his emotions.
But emotional or not, make no mistake, said Whitney, the three-term former governor was always in charge.
“Engler was always hands on with State of the States, starting around Thanksgiving with an outline,” he said. “Many of the staff would get together and he’d reach out to his department heads and try to include their concerns. From my perspective, as the speechwriter, the wonderful part of the State of the State for me was that I got to work so closely with the governor for those two months, especially toward the end.”
Asked whether he would go back to state government if offered the opportunity, Whitney said: “Cicero said: ‘Give seven years to the Republic.’ I’ve given 11 and a half, and they were great years. It was a dynamic administration with wonderful people, great ideas, a time when there was the romance of politics, but that time is gone.”
He said politicians now “only know each other as a slogan, not as a person.”
“With the lack of institutional knowledge, I got out of state government just in time to not become cynical,” he said.
That attitude has crafted how he teaches history to students at Grand Valley State University and Aquinas College, his other current occupation along with his post at Grand Valley’s presidential center.
He said he focuses on leadership since so many history students and those that he meets at the Hauenstein Center want to become leaders. Whitney said he tries to emphasize to them the importance of maintaining one’s integrity and ideals and “never losing sight of the fact that the people you disagree with are opponents, never enemies.”
Whitney said his goal is to raise the international profile of Grand Valley, the presidential center and its graduates by attending conferences, holding classes and this year having a Library of Congress event in Washington. Whitney noted the launch of a presidential informational website in 2003, www.allpresidents.org, which has tallied more than 23 million hits, making it the top presidential studies site in existence, according to Google.
Asked if he enjoys his current work or someday envisions himself perhaps moving into federal government, Whitney quoted the presidential center’s namesake, Ralph Hauenstein: “Love your job, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
“I pinch myself everyday that I get to do this work,” he said.
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