Justice & Law Quote by George W. Bush

America sells itself on reinvention, and Bush leans hard into that national brand here. The first clause flatters the audience with an identity: we are the place where failure isn’t destiny. Then he quietly widens the definition of “failure” to include incarceration, a move that matters because prison in American politics is usually coded as moral stain, not civic responsibility. By pairing “second chance” with the image of “gates” opening, he turns reentry into a ceremonial passage: not just release, but return.

The subtext is strategic. Bush, a Republican president associated in the public mind with “tough on crime” governance, is staking out a different kind of conservatism: one that frames rehabilitation as public order, faith, and practicality rather than indulgence. “Should” is doing the heavy lifting. It’s soft language that avoids naming the systems that make that better life hard to reach: employment bans, housing barriers, supervision fees, stigma, the political incentives that keep prisons full. He doesn’t say “we will,” because “we will” triggers fights over budgets, sentencing, and accountability. “Should” invites moral agreement without immediately assigning blame.

The context is early-2000s reform energy that cut across ideology: evangelical prison ministries, emerging bipartisan interest in reentry programs, and an economy that made the idea of getting people back to work sound like common sense. The line works because it recasts reentry as a test of national character, not a favor to “criminals” - and it asks listeners to feel proud while nudging them, gently, toward policy.