Politics & Power Quote by Jon Huntsman, Jr.

A certain kind of patriotic panic is doing heavy lifting here: the worldview of the diplomat-politician who’s looked at America from the outside and come back speaking in deadline language. Huntsman frames his authority as experiential rather than ideological: “those of us who have lived abroad” functions like a credential and a gentle rebuke to insular politics. It implies that the real threat isn’t just foreign competitors, but domestic complacency - the people who haven’t seen the scoreboard.

“Highly competitive 21st century” is corporate diction smuggled into national destiny. It recasts geopolitics as a market where countries either innovate or get acquired. That’s the subtext: the United States isn’t guaranteed primacy by virtue, history, or exceptionalism; it has to keep winning. The phrase “where this world is going” conveniently avoids naming the antagonist (China, multipolarity, post-American institutions) while still conjuring it. Ambiguity broadens the coalition. Everyone can insert their preferred fear.

Then comes the hinge: “strengthen our core.” It’s a deliberately vague prescription that invites projection - education, infrastructure, fiscal discipline, social cohesion, military readiness - without committing to a divisive plan. The moral charge arrives at the end. “The end of the American century” nods to the post-1945 era of U.S. dominance, but also to the anxiety that this dominance might look, in hindsight, like an exception rather than a baseline.

“Totally unacceptable” is less argument than ultimatum. It’s meant to collapse debate into resolve: decline isn’t a policy outcome, it’s a failure of character. In a period when globalization was eroding old certainties and the Great Recession had bruised U.S. confidence, Huntsman’s intent is to convert unease into a mandate for renewal - and to position himself as the clear-eyed adult in the room.