Daily Inspiration Quote by Donna Shalala

Privilege hides best in the grammar of efficiency. Shalala's line is framed as a minor logistical note, the kind of breezy clarification offered in a busy person's defense: of course she returns calls; she's productive; her time is managed. The driver is introduced as a convenience, not a luxury. That casualness is the point. It normalizes a tier of public life where the friction ordinary people absorb - traffic, parking, the risk of missing a call because both hands are on the wheel - is quietly outsourced.

As a public servant, Shalala isn't bragging in the celebrity sense; she's signaling institutional fluency. High-level government work is a constant churn of communications, and the subtext is: I am always on, always reachable, always working. The driver becomes an argument for competence. Yet the phrase also reveals how authority insulates itself. "I have a driver" is less about transportation than about the invisible staff and resources that make power run smoothly, even when the job is ostensibly "public."

Context matters: Shalala spent decades at the top of bureaucratic and political hierarchies (university president, cabinet secretary, member of Congress). In those circles, a driver can be standard operating procedure, justified by security, schedule density, or sheer geography. Still, the line lands as a tiny but telling fracture between governing class and governed life. It compresses a whole worldview: the day's demands are nonnegotiable, and the system will provide buffers so the work - and the worker - never has to slow down.