"He testified that when you looked at it through the eyes of 'let's do it,' the costs were very small. They were less than they'd had to spend to host a convention of transportation executives. The cost was not that great"
About this Quote
The tell is in the borrowed voice: "let's do it". Major Owens isn't just arguing about budgets; he's staging a conflict between two ways of seeing government. One is managerial and allergic to risk, where every idea has to justify itself against a spreadsheet. The other is political in the older, bolder sense: a posture of willingness that makes the same numbers suddenly look trivial. Owens frames that shift as an "eyes" change, implying the barrier was never purely financial. It was psychological, institutional, and, pointedly, elective.
The comparison is the knife. By measuring a presumably public-serving initiative against the cost of hosting "a convention of transportation executives", he drags technocratic priorities into daylight. A convention is networking, status, and routine; it reads as comfortable spending for insiders. So when Owens says the project cost less than that, he isn't only minimizing expense. He's accusing the system of being more fluent in serving professional ecosystems than in doing the messy work of public action.
"Not that great" lands with studied understatement, a politician's weapon because it forces the listener to supply the outrage. If the money was always there for executive gatherings, why the hesitation when it comes to real outcomes? Owens' intent is to reframe resistance as preference: the establishment didn't object to the price tag; it objected to the change implied by "let's do it."
The comparison is the knife. By measuring a presumably public-serving initiative against the cost of hosting "a convention of transportation executives", he drags technocratic priorities into daylight. A convention is networking, status, and routine; it reads as comfortable spending for insiders. So when Owens says the project cost less than that, he isn't only minimizing expense. He's accusing the system of being more fluent in serving professional ecosystems than in doing the messy work of public action.
"Not that great" lands with studied understatement, a politician's weapon because it forces the listener to supply the outrage. If the money was always there for executive gatherings, why the hesitation when it comes to real outcomes? Owens' intent is to reframe resistance as preference: the establishment didn't object to the price tag; it objected to the change implied by "let's do it."
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|
More Quotes by Major
Add to List
