Gov. Jennifer Granholm began with a moment of blunt honesty, as she delivered her annual state of the state address for the very last time.
"The old Michigan economy is gone," she told a joint session of the Michigan Legislature and a statewide television audience.
Gone, and never coming back. "A million Michigan jobs lost over the last decade," she admitted, most of them gone since she took office seven years ago, vowing to do great things.
Vowing, as she infamously said during her 2006 state of the state speech, that Michiganders would be "blown away" by the enormous economic progress they would soon make.
Instead, war, a national recession and an automotive industry meltdown got in the way. For her entire two terms, Michigan has faced steadily deepening deficits, decline, and partisan gridlock.
This year, lawmakers face their toughest challenge of all. Last year, they used federal stimulus money to plug an enormous deficit.
That money is virtually all gone now. Another $2 billion deficit is looming for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, a Republican from the affluent Detroit suburb of Rochester, has vowed to prevent any tax increases, no matter what.
Gov. Granholm threw out her own challenge: No more cuts to public education, no matter what. In fact, more money.
Last year, the Legislature eliminated the Michigan Promise scholarship, leaving 96,000 students who were counting on that money in the lurch. This year, the governor vowed "that my budget for the year ahead will restore the Michigan Promise Scholarship, identify a creative way to pay for it, and give it a new focus."
That focus will be "keeping our young people in the state when they earn their degrees." The governor added, almost defiantly:
"I will also draw the line against additional education cuts ... is there a single family in Michigan that would choose to make ends meet in hard times by sacrificing the needs of the children?"
Yet there is no way the state can avoid such cuts without new revenue. The governor previously outlined a package that would force longtime state workers into retirement and trim their pensions and benefits, cuts that have union leaders screaming.
She is now pushing ending lifetime medical coverage for state legislators, a plan the House passed Feb. 1 (after members prudently made sure it applied just to new lawmakers, not themselves.) But even if those cuts are enacted, the budget -- which has to be balanced by law -- is still more than a billion dollars in the hole.
The state of the state speech was her one opportunity to make the case for tax increases to a televised statewide audience.
Yet she didn't say a word about how she would pay for all of this, sacrificing her chance to make a case for more money.
Instead, she said only that she would release her budget proposal Feb. 12. She then devoted most of her hour-long speech to a mind-numbingly detailed defense of the programs she and her administration have put in place to diversify Michigan's economy.
Listeners heard about an insurance company in Traverse City that has added 390 jobs; about a company in Eaton Rapids that had been able to stay in business making parts for wind turbines, and about many other micro-success stories.
She concluded with a story about a laid-off worker in a Lansing suburb who had gone back to school and found a job with an alternative energy company. "I find nothing but hope for the new Michigan," she concluded at last, to sustained applause.
Only trouble is, Michigan has to get through this year first, and she somehow has to keep her promises and balance the budget, in a world where the state senate seems likely to block any tax increase.
Add to that the challenge that this is an election year for every single seat in the Legislature and in the executive branch.
Tom Watkins, who is now a business and educational consultant who focuses on relations between Michigan and China, was Granholm's first state superintendent of schools.
After the speech, he shook his head in disgust. "So this is Lansing math? We start the state budget with a $2 billion hole, propose $450 million in reforms, not all of which will happen in the next fiscal year, add back in the Promise scholarship ... and there remains nearly the budget hole we started with remaining to be filled? Tell me how this all adds up.
He then paused and added, "well, as the Chinese say, may we live in interesting times."
This year promises to be an interesting one indeed for Michigan. And as Watkins knows very well, that Chinese saying about "interesting times" was meant as a curse.
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