It’s always fun to see the work product of out-of-state political reporters who parachute into the state and, in a nanosecond, try to get a read on who the real Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is.

That usually means yet another cross examination about her running for president.

You have to hand it to the governor’s handlers, who have masterfully parlayed her national recognition — created in part by then-President Donald Trump (think “that woman from Michigan”) — into the most extensive national coverage of a Michigan governor in recent history.

The national spot has run the spectrum from the New York Times to the Little Falls (Iowa) Daily Review, if there is such a rag. But you get the point. It’s been all over the lot.

Weeks ago, it was Vanity Fair. This past week, a writer from the Atlantic took his stab at the “Whitmer for president” story, and, among his findings, he reports on her “foul-mouthed irreverence, goofy humor, and ability to pound beers.”

The Mark Leibovich effort to crack that presidential nut was conducted in the “Off the Record” TV studio as she sat on the pristine white guest couch cross-legged and wearing a camouflage sweatshirt with the word “Michigangster” scripted across the front.

He noted to her that the show title was “weird,” in that it had 100,000 viewers (on a good day).

“I know,” Leibovich reports she said, agreeing with him on the weirdness of the “Off the Record” broadcast title.

Having traveled where others have trodded, he also discovered she has no plans to run for president against the man who already has the job. And, when he fell the other day, Leibovich wanted to know, in an instant, did that change her mind?

“No,” she shot back in one of those famous Whitmer short and now-move-on-to-something-else responses.

He discovered that she was a gamer.

“Clearly though Whitmer was happy to go through the KABUKI of being interrogated over whether she might change her mind,” he writes.

He concluded that the creation of her Fight Like Hell Political Action Committee, creating a vehicle to spread around some cash to candidates she cottons to, is the sort of thing “restless and term-limited statewide leaders do trying to take themselves national.”

He also reflects that she is one of the top Democrats on the “if Biden backs out” index, and is clearly, therefore, one of those shining, raising new leaders in the national party. She says she is fine with that label.

She told him the new state flower is the orange barrel dotting the road repair countryside, and she suggested as they closed down the “Off the Record” Studio C chit-chat that they’ll “keep talking. How’s that?”

She lays the groundwork for future interviews on who knows what might come along.

“And one of these days we’ll have a beer. Or three,” she suggests as he heads out the door for the airport to catch a plane back home, eager to share all those goodies.

Somebody thought it would be fun to pick the brain of the latest parachuter to jump in just to see what else he might have learned. The outreach effort began with a call to the Atlantic customer service number. That resulted in the person claiming he could not transfer the call to the newsroom because there was no phone there.

What the?

Talk about being weird.