Leadership Quote by Steve Buyer

A disaster becomes a policy crowbar in Steve Buyer’s line, and that’s the tell. By framing Hurricane Katrina as something that "did reveal a weakness", he shifts the storm from human tragedy to national diagnostic: the catastrophe is valuable because it produces evidence. The syntax is bureaucratically careful - "I also believe" softens the claim, "did reveal" implies the facts surfaced on their own, and "highlighting" suggests neutral illumination rather than political blame. It’s a rhetorical move built to travel well in hearings and Sunday shows: sober, technocratic, hard to argue with.

The intent is to broaden Katrina’s meaning beyond levees and emergency management into energy security, a lane where federal power and industry interest often align. The subtext is that dependency on the Gulf Coast isn’t just a regional vulnerability; it’s a strategic liability. That opens space for policies that can sound like resilience (diversifying supply routes, hardening infrastructure) while also justifying expanded domestic extraction, new pipelines, refinery subsidies, or deregulation - all without naming winners and losers.

Context matters: Katrina didn’t merely interrupt lives; it knocked out refineries, ports, and offshore production, spiking anxiety about gas prices and supply shocks. Buyer’s phrasing captures that post-9/11 era reflex where "security" became a master argument. The weakness isn’t moral or managerial; it’s structural, and that choice quietly directs outrage away from governance failures and toward an energy map that can be redrawn.