The War Room With Jennifer Granholm

Okay, I admit it, I watched the second installment of "The War Room with Jennifer Granholm." (Don't give me a hard time about my judgment, watching it was punishment enough.)

Honestly, I always thought that Granholm was a poor public speaker. Her most famous line "In five years your going to be blown away" was as uninspiring in salesmanship as ultimately were the results of her product. (She does get five points for not overselling!) Even as governor, when she stood behind teleprompters and was thus able to avoid the frequent mangling of words, (something she could not do during either of her first two shows) I found her voice and cadence tentative.

She seemed very uncomfortable, particularly standing beside the discussion table with her guests; something that appeared to discomfort everyone. She looks at the wrong camera frequently, and demonstrably speaks with her hands when she has a trouble finding the right words--one of these times she's going to accidentally poke some poor guest's eye out.

I assume that within a week or two a lot of nervous tics will be ironed out and, for Jenny's sake, that the discussion table gets scrapped for something that doesn't look like it belongs at an open bar mingler.

To Granholm's credit, I believe that Granholm wants her show to be more mainstream Democrat than the ultra-left blathering idiot Olbermann and the raging Cenk Uygur. As evidence, she managed to find herself one professing Republican guest (Jillian Manus) but of the ilk that Dems are most famous for unearthing--those that during the last election cycle voted for Obama rather than leave the top of their ballot blank or write in a palatable candidate of their own professed party.

There was significant buildup and promotion for "The War Room With Jennifer Granholm." It was going to be fresh, hard hitting and was purported to be the fleshing out of a lineup of hosts on Current that could rival that of Fox News' nightly stable. It might have been fresh but it was far short of hard-hitting and it will remain so until the potholes get filled.

My guess is that Democrats so far are disappointed with the show but that they hold out hope that the bugs will become smoothed out over the short term. I believe this because, as a long time detractor of Granholm, I was giddy with the awfulness of the show's production and performance.

Time will tell if it significantly improves. My guess is that, over time, it has to. Maybe I'll watch again in a couple of weeks to see if things have changed. Let's just consider it my own little form of self flagellation.