Gretchen Whitmer Wants a Gen X President in 2028

Whatever the result of this year’s election, it will most likely be the end of an era.Because of their ages — not to mention the law for whoever wins — it’s hard to imagine President Biden or former President Donald Trump running again in 2028, opening the door to a new generation of political leaders.

And for Democrats, there are few politicians talked about more than Gov.Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.After serving more than a decade in the Michigan Legislature, Whitmer was elected to the governorship in 2018.

She became a national figure during the pandemic, when right-wing media and Republican officials, including Trump, railed against her lockdown measures as extreme government overreach.(Whitmer blames Trump’s rhetoric for inspiring a 2020 kidnapping and assassination plot against her.)But it was what Whitmer did in 2022 that really cemented her as a political force: With the help of legislative redistricting and a reproductive-rights ballot initiative, she gave Democrats a trifecta, winning re-election and flipping control of both the State House and Senate to her party for the first time in nearly 40 years.

She has leveraged that majority to enact a progressive wish list of policies, including basic but meaningful gun-control legislation and a new clean-energy plan, and she’s pushing for universal pre-K and free community college.Whitmer is term-limited though — her governorship will end in 2026.And given that she is a popular governor in a battleground state, there is a lot of speculation about what’s next, which is why I was eager to talk to her.

Like many politicians with national ambitions, she has written a book about her life and her vision for the country.It’s called “True Gretch” (she told me that’s a play on the 1969 John Wayne classic “True Grit”).

The book is coming out just as the presidential election is heating up, and she’s also raising her profile as a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign.Over the cours...