Leadership Quote by Jennifer Granholm

“On the cusp, on the brink” is political language that behaves like a drumroll: it doesn’t name the next act, but it primes you to accept that something big is about to happen and that you should pick a side before it does. Granholm’s doubling is the point. Two near-synonyms stack urgency without committing to specifics, a useful move for an official trying to rally a broad coalition where the details (costs, timelines, winners and losers) are exactly what people fight about.

As a Democratic governor-turned-Biden cabinet secretary focused on energy and economic transition, Granholm is almost always speaking with two audiences in mind. To supporters, “enormous change” reads as promise: clean energy jobs, industrial policy, a retooled manufacturing base, a country that competes with China and lowers emissions at the same time. To skeptics, it’s preemptive framing: disruption is coming, so resistance looks like nostalgia, not prudence. The subtext is a wager on inevitability. If change is framed as a historical tide, then policy becomes less a debate than a management problem: get on board and steer, or get swept.

The phrase also works because it’s intentionally vague about whether the change will be comfortable. “Enormous” can mean prosperous or painful; “cusp” can be thrilling or terrifying. That ambiguity lets Granholm claim optimism while leaving room to absorb backlash when reality arrives unevenly: higher short-term costs, community displacement, grid constraints, or regional job churn. It’s not just forecasting; it’s permission-seeking, asking the public to tolerate volatility in exchange for a promised landing on the other side.