Leadership Quote by Jennifer Granholm

Granholm isn’t really talking about shorelines; she’s auditioning a metaphor that’s safe enough for a politician and vivid enough to feel personal. The repetition of “beautiful coastline” followed by the quick turn - “It can be a rough coastline” - is the classic governing move: celebrate the dream, then acknowledge the grind. It’s optimism with calluses.

What makes it work is how tactile it is. “Waves are huge. The rocks are steep.” Those short, declarative sentences strip away policy-speak and replace it with a scene you can feel in your body. She’s choosing nature’s scale to imply stakes: these places aren’t just pretty backdrops, they’re forces. That’s an emotional bid for seriousness without sounding alarmist.

The California/Vancouver pairing is doing quiet diplomatic work. By saying “Same thing in Vancouver,” Granholm collapses borders into shared experience, a useful gesture for a U.S. official dealing with energy, climate, or regional economic ties. She’s smoothing over geopolitical complexity by emphasizing a common coastline identity - dramatic, rugged, interconnected. It’s a way to suggest that problems (and solutions) don’t stop at the national line, even if the regulations do.

There’s subtext, too, in the word “dramatic.” It flatters the audience’s sense of place while legitimizing disruption. Drama isn’t just spectacle; it’s conflict. Granholm is framing volatility - environmental, economic, political - as intrinsic to the landscape, which subtly normalizes the idea that resilience, not perfection, is the realistic standard.