Only On GoJo - Al Gore made her do it and she’s happy he did.
Of all the career options open to former governors, Jennifer Granholm(D) laughs loud and strong when asked why she chose to host a television show on politics on Current TV. Her answer is she didn’t.
“I had no plans to be a political talk host in any way, shape, or form,” upon leaving office as the governor of Michigan a year ago. But 2012 is a campaign year and Gore, who founded Current, is trying to build something like a left leaning prime time news line up and he thought Granholm would be a perfect host to fill a slot during the election season.
Right now that’s all it is. Granholm hosts The War Room, weeknights on Current(9PET) and once the next president has been chosen, it’s on to other things. Although, as often happens in the news business, one big story leads to another. Someone has to cover the transition to the next administration – even if it’s a second term for Obama – and then there’s the new Congress, the new relationship between the White House and Capitol Hill and so on. If Current wants to extend the War Room beyond the end of the year, there will be plenty of reasons to do so.
Unlike most politicians brought on the set of a television show, Granholm is doing something more than just showing up and being herself. Like former Governor Eliot Spitzer(D-NY), she has shown in the past few weeks, that she is comfortable in the role of a television host. She knows some of the tricks of the broadcasting trade. She can walk and talk at the same time, move around the set, read a TelePromptr, transition from one segment to the next with ease and even use the latest gadget, the “big board” touch screen flat panel display.
While all this looks easy when done by a practiced professional, it is not. Granholm’s comfort with her broadcast surroundings is notably different from others who have tried to make this transition and may provide her with other opportunities once her contract with Gore’s network is up.
More important, is the perspective she brings to the broadcast. First of all, she is not a journalist and isn’t trying to be one. She is a former, and possibly future politician, with a progressive point of view. She is not even trying to be fair and balanced, but she isn’t preachy about it.
In an interview with Governors Journal, Granholm volunteered that she liked Spitzer’s show, but the problem was, it was on CNN. To Granholm, that meant Spitzer had to make a noticeable effort to give both sides a chance to tell their story.
“I equate that with some kind of false equivalency,” Granholm says. In her view, there are times when one side is right and the other side is wrong. To give both sides equal time, is in itself, misleading. “In my opinion, the folks who went to Washington, D.C. for the purpose of blocking” President Obama’s agenda don’t deserve a chance to blame the other side.
Granholm’s program lives under the rules of the new transparency of the Internet age. Every news source has a point of view and the only responsibility content providers have is to disclose that point of view. Let the readers, viewers, users decide whether the information the source is providing is credible.
On that point Granholm has an advantage and she has not been hesitant to use it. As a former candidate and elected official, she knows how the game is played and she knows the hard realities of making public policy.
“I was the governor of the state with the most challenged economy in the nation,” Granholm says. She brings that experience to the set when she is interviewing an elected official, or a guest brought in to comment on the politics of the day. “I know how to un-peel the onion…I’m pursuing the why.”
She says the political talk shows she learns the most from are those hosted by others who have been in the arena, including; Spitzer and Lawrence O’Donnell, on MSNBC. Viewers of the War Room can detect that same kind of insight with Granholm. “I can tell when people are delivering talking points, because I’ve delivered a lot of talking points. I also know the answers to a lot of the questions I am asking.”
The result is a political talk show that moves faster than most, because the host can quickly get past the preliminaries and the guests know there is a limit to what they can get away with. Although you might criticize the program for the host’s strong affiliation with the positions of the Democratic Party, any viewer knows that going in and can accept, or reject her conclusions just as easily as they are given.
The War Room With Jennifer Granholm. Weeknights – Current TV (9PET).
