Time & Perspective Quote by Jennifer Granholm

Michigan isn’t just a place in this line; it’s a bet. Granholm frames the state’s “future” as something that can be manufactured, not merely awaited, and she does it with the cadence of necessity: “We need to, we must.” That doubling isn’t accidental. It’s political pressure turned into moral urgency, designed to make economic development sound like a civic obligation rather than a policy choice.

The key move is her attempt to weld optimism (“most exciting”) to a very specific industrial prescription: alternative-energy vehicles made “right here.” That last phrase carries the real payload. It’s a compact response to decades of Midwestern anxiety about offshoring, deindustrialization, and the slow erosion of the auto economy’s identity. Granholm isn’t selling green tech as sacrifice; she’s selling it as continuity - the next chapter of the same Michigan story, with new parts under the hood.

Subtextually, this is also an argument about who deserves to win the clean-energy race. “Capitalize” is doing double duty: cashing in economically, yes, but also seizing an advantage before other states or countries lock up the supply chains, patents, and jobs. It’s climate policy translated into competition, which is often the only language industrial states will accept without flinching.

Context matters: Granholm governed during a period when Michigan was searching for a post-peak auto identity, and when “green jobs” was a contested promise. The quote works because it treats transition as reclamation - not abandoning the factory, but redefining what it builds.