Politics & Power Quote by Roger Wicker

Safety here is framed as a promise that carefully avoids being a promise. Wicker’s line does two jobs at once: it concedes uncertainty ("never be 100 percent safe") while still projecting command ("working around the clock"). That pairing is the rhetorical sweet spot of post-crisis politics: acknowledge fear just enough to sound realistic, then immediately offer a soothing image of relentless competence.

The intent is reassurance, but the subtext is managerial. Risk is treated like a technical problem being handled by professionals, not a political choice involving tradeoffs, costs, or civil-liberties friction. "Measures" is doing heavy lifting: it’s vague enough to cover everything from intelligence expansion to airport security theater to surveillance authorities, without naming any policy that could trigger debate. "Protect the American people" is similarly broad, a civic benediction that casts dissent as implicitly anti-safety.

Context matters: American officials have been trained by decades of terrorism politics to speak in a language where prevention is mandatory, failure is unforgivable, and metrics are impossible. You can’t prove a plot that never happened, so performance becomes the message. "Around the clock" isn’t evidence; it’s atmosphere, a way to turn bureaucratic activity into moral virtue.

The line also normalizes a permanent state of alert. By admitting total safety is unattainable, it quietly makes open-ended security policy feel inevitable. The public is asked to accept ongoing anxiety in exchange for continuous effort, with accountability replaced by the promise of ceaseless work.