Leadership Quote by Jennifer Granholm

“Obviously” does a lot of political heavy lifting here. Granholm isn’t just stating a preference; she’s trying to preempt a fight. By marking the goal as self-evident, she nudges critics into an awkward position: if you argue with her, you sound like you want people to lose their livelihoods. It’s a soft form of coercion, the kind that lets a politician claim common sense while sidestepping the harder question of tradeoffs.

The line’s real work is in “the jobs we’ve got.” It’s defensive, almost conservationist. Not jobs we could create, not careers we could build, not industries we could reinvent, but the existing payroll - the ones voters can name, the factories they can point to, the benefits they can’t afford to gamble away. That specificity matters in eras of churn: globalization, automation, and the energy transition all ask communities to accept abstract future gains while enduring immediate, personal loss. Politicians learn quickly that “creative destruction” plays great in think tanks and terribly in counties.

The phrase also hints at a governing posture: reassure first, reform later. Whether Granholm is talking about manufacturing, clean energy, or economic development, the subtext is coalition management - calming labor, moderates, and local business leaders who fear being sacrificed on the altar of long-term policy goals. It’s political triage disguised as optimism: keep what’s in hand, then argue about what comes next.