Politics & Power Quote by Leonard Boswell

The line reads like a neatly stacked sandwich of public goods: environment, economy, nation. That order is doing quiet political work. By leading with “the good of our environment,” Boswell preemptively answers the most predictable objection to locks and dams: that big river infrastructure is ecological vandalism dressed up as progress. He’s trying to claim the green mantle before critics can, framing the project not as a tradeoff but as a win-win-win.

“Upper Mississippi locks and dams” is policy-speak with regional gravity. In the Midwest, these structures aren’t abstract; they are the plumbing of corn, soy, and industrial freight. The subtext is jobs, barge traffic, farm incomes, and the competitiveness of an export economy that depends on cheap water transport. Saying “economy” lets him gesture at all of that without naming any constituency too bluntly, which would make the ask look like pork.

Then comes the rhetorical escalator: “and the good of the Nation.” A local infrastructure project gets nationalized. That’s a classic move for an elected official: lift a district priority into the language of patriotic necessity, making opposition feel parochial or even un-American.

The phrase “strongly urge support” signals a coalition moment, likely around appropriations or authorization battles where the project needed federal dollars and political cover. Boswell isn’t presenting evidence; he’s assembling permission. The intent is to compress complexity into moral clarity, implying that anyone against the locks and dams is against clean stewardship, prosperity, and national interest all at once.