'True Gretch' a conversation about Whitmer's new book

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2024/07/07/michigan-whitmer-new-book-true-gretch/74249101007/

In a characteristically pragmatic, Midwestern way, the 10 life lessons Whitmer shares — with chapter titles like, “don’t let the bullies get you down,” “take nothing personally,” “you’ll never regret being kind” — collectively make the case that in 2024, the United States of America needs a way back more than a look forward.

Or maybe just an off-ramp from the turbulence that has engulfed this country for the last eight years.

All of us lived through these years, but Whitmer’s perspective comes from the center of the storm. She survived, literally, the wild backlash of the COVID-19 pandemic — a group of extremists, apparently incensed by her pandemic restrictions, plotted to kidnap and kill her — governing through the efforts of the Trump administration to hamper Michigan’s COVID response, the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the fight to preserve reproductive rights in Michigan, and an intense 2022 re-election campaign.

Whitmer is unselfconsciously frank about details others might try to obscure: As a tailgating teenager, she threw up on her principal’s shoes. As a child at church camp, Whitmer knocked her front teeth out, and keeping implants in place has been a task. She has tattoos, including one of a shark, as in, “It’s Shark Week, m-----f-----,” an expletive she was caught mouthing on camera before a virtual speech delivered to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

**snip**

She’s terrifically popular in Michigan, her 67.8% approval rating far exceeding Biden or former President Donald Trump. Personally progressive, she governs as a centrist, focused on the “dinner table” issues she believes Michiganders care most about. She can appeal to voters in multiple Rust Belt swing states. She’s a Gen X woman at a time when voters are weary of the male septuagenarian and octogenarian political class. She’s won every election she’s run in, becoming governor twice by wide margins — and she’s good at her job.

**snip**