Leadership Quote by Joe Manchin

The invitation is doing double duty: it sells a state and it sells its messenger. Manchin’s “Come to West Virginia” isn’t tourism copy so much as a rebuttal to a national caricature. The ellipses soften the edges, letting “how to live... how to treat people” land like folksy common sense instead of a scold. But it is a scold, gently delivered: an implied contrast with a polarized, overly online America where basic decency feels partisan.

The subtext is classic border-state triangulation. “We’re open for business” speaks in the fluent shorthand of investors and energy interests, signaling that West Virginia won’t be lectured out of its economic DNA. At the same time, “show you how to live” wraps that pro-industry posture in moral language, as if commerce and character are the same project. That’s the rhetorical move: turn policy into temperament. If you question the state’s direction, you’re not just debating jobs or regulation; you’re failing a test of respect.

Context matters. West Virginia has been treated as both punchline and pathology in national coverage, especially amid the opioid crisis, coal’s decline, and political realignment. Manchin answers by reframing the state as a teacher rather than a case study. “Truly on the move” is boosterish, almost stubbornly so, insisting on momentum when the data often reads like stagnation. It’s aspiration as counter-narrative, aimed at outsiders who dismiss the place and insiders who need to believe staying can still mean progress.