Posted by joel leonard
Beauty Pageant jennifer granholm
It’s a typical day on the campaign trail for Jennifer Granholm, current host of Current TV’s political news analysis show “The War Room” and former governor of Michigan. After two evening fund-raisers that end at 8:30, she heads to a television station for an interview that’s scheduled for 10:30, and answers e-mails until past midnight.
Granholm, 43, is wearing a Farrah Fawcett hairdo and high-rise jeans that recall her days as Miss California 1970. She doesn’t look intimidated as she tries to explain why she’s the best choice for president and criticizes Gov. John Engler’s policies.
After a while, her voice is hoarse, but she presses on. She talks about how her background in law and public service makes her a good candidate for president, about how she’s an activist who has helped organize protests against corporate greed and about how she was the first woman to serve as governor of Michigan.
She is also the author of A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future, published in 2004. In 1984, she graduated from the University of California-Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political science and French and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987. Her paternal grandfather immigrated to Canada from Robertsfors, Sweden, in the 1930s and worked as a bank teller in Penny, British Columbia.
Beauty queens often have to work extra hard to be taken seriously in politics, says Heather French Henry, a Kentucky Democratic Lt. Gov. and a former Miss America 2000 who travels to Washington frequently to testify before Congress on veterans’ issues. She believes that the discipline and time management required by beauty pageants can help candidates hone their public-speaking skills, for instance.