Gretchen Whitmer on shark tattoos, domestic terrorism and the Democrats' dilemma

Gretchen Whitmer has written a breezy account of her Midwestern upbringing and the plainspoken approach to the politics it forged − a book timed to come out just before the Democratic National Convention would unanimously renominate Joe Biden in a campaign that would put her home state, Michigan, at center stage.

Then Biden's disastrous debate happened.

In the firestorm that followed, the two-term governor has found herself near the top of the Frequently Mentioned Replacements should the 81-year-old president heed calls to step back from the race just a month before Democrats convene in Chicago.

This is not the topic Whitmer, 52, is eager to discuss. She would prefer to talk about her book, "True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between," being published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster. The biggest revelation in its 159 pages is the disclosure that she had a shark tattooed on her right shoulder after the last Democratic convention. (It's a long story.)

That said, the book also lists political lessons she has learned, and some of them seem to apply to the Democrats' dilemma now. "Own your screwups," for one. For another: "Run toward the fire."

In an interview last week with USA TODAY on the video platform Google Meet, Whitmer was loyal to Biden but not oblivious to their party's unprecedented political situation and its perils − not always an easy line to walk. As one of the national co-chairs of the campaign, she is a "sounding board more than anything," she said. "But I think there's a lot of assessment that's happening right now, I would assume."

Would it be good for the nation if Biden decided not to run?

"You know what? I'm not going to entertain any conversation along that line," she replied. "The president is in this race, he is running, and he's got my unequivocal support."

Live blog:Biden faces big day as Democrats meet over calls for president to quit race; live updates

Does she believe electing Donald Trump in November would imperil democracy?

"I am very concerned about what a second Trump term might look like just based on the things that he himself has said about what he would do with that kind of power."

Does that raise the stakes for the conversation Democrats are having now?

"I think so," she said. "Yeah."

Read the transcript:Q-and-A: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's candid conversation with USA TODAY

A warning about Michigan, again

Twenty-four hours after the CNN debate in Atlanta, Biden's campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, called her, Whitmer said, in part of the campaign's outreach to reassure key Democrats. The president's struggle to speak coherently and effectively challenge Trump had shaken his own supporters.

Whitmer said she gave the same warnings she had delivered before about Biden's challenges in winning Michigan, part of the so-called Blue Wall in the upper Midwest crucial to Democratic prospects.

"The nature of our conversation was me for a thousandth time reiterating Michigan's just tough terrain," she said. "It is. I've said it a million times. I'm going to say it a million more times between now and the election."

She disputed a report in Politico that she had warned O'Malley Dillon the state was no longer winnable for Biden after the debate. "It's precarious, but it can be done," she said. Or that she had placed the call herself to reassure the campaign that she wasn't encouraging the suggestion among some that she replace the president on the ticket. Speculation on possible alternatives has centered on Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Whitmer.

Asked if she had disavowed the "draft Whitmer" efforts, Whitmer said: "I may have made some remark about all these distractions. We can't get distracted, so I wouldn't be surprised if I said that, but I don't recall it specifically."

The talk makes her "uncomfortable," she said. "I feel like it actually undermines the work that I'm putting in on behalf of the administration."

Whitmer, who is term-limited from running for governor again when her tenure ends in January 2027, has long dismissed out-of-hand questions about whether she might run for president one day. She says she has no plans for a White House bid, now or later. "I don't foresee that," she told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, two years ago.

Although, to be precise, "no plans" is not exactly a Shermanesque declaration of permanent non-interest.

'That woman from Michigan' known for her bluntness, humor and leather jackets

Gretchen Esther Whitmer is known for her bluntness, humor and leather jackets. She's a Gen Xer, elected to the Michigan House of Representatives at 31, then to the state Senate, then to the governorship in 2018. She solidified her status as a rising Democratic star when she not only was reelected in 2022 but also led the state's Democrats to flip control of the House and Senate.

During her first term, she took charge of Michigan's aggressive and controversial efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Her willingness to confront Trump, then the president, raised her national profile. "That woman from Michigan," he called her, a disparagement she made her signature.

The COVID-19 measures also led to a more serious threat.

In 2020, a militia group that called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen orchestrated a plot to kidnap and kill Whitmer in retaliation for the lockdowns and other steps she had ordered during the pandemic. In all, 14 men were charged in federal or state court. Nine were convicted; five were acquitted.

The FBI disrupted the plot, but the experience left scars.

"I don't walk into any grouping of people without really being aware of where my (security) detail is, looking at the crowd to see is there anything or anyone that I should take note of or where the exits are," she said. "And so that has changed me. And I think it's sad because I am more reserved than I was."

She's not sure whether that will ever change. "Maybe when I'm not in the public eye, it'll recede," she said. "But I don't know."

Even so, she said she would like to sit down and talk with some of the men, those who took responsibility for their role.

"I'd like to understand; I really would," she said, as a way to figure out where common ground could be found. "I would like to understand the instinct to take up weapons and plot. The assassination of a governor is not a rational conclusion to a stay-at-home order. It's just not. And so, what was going on there?

"And maybe there's something I can learn. Maybe there's something from a part of the state or a part of the human experience that'll make me a better leader or give me some insight that I can do something constructive with. Maybe there's nothing. Maybe I won't learn anything, but I'd like to see."

A shark on her shoulder

What about that shark tattoo?

Just before she was to deliver a virtual speech to the Democratic convention in 2020, Whitmer repeated a comedian's punchline, meant to be a statement of empowerment for women. "It's Shark Week," she declared, then mouthed an obscenity. The clip was leaked and went viral.

"For that to be the thing that came out" from the speech, "I was like, 'Oh, God, what did I do?'" she said. But supporters began wearing T-shirts with the phrase, and the Discovery Channel sent her a "Shark Week care package," which she described as "lovely."

Now the phrase has become a sort of personal slogan that reminds her to "stay loose, be who you are, show up as you are," she said. "And putting the shark on my shoulder felt like just a little extra support."

For whatever comes next.