Leadership Quote by William Weld

A politician’s favorite kind of reform is the kind that sounds brave while touching as little as possible, and Weld’s line is built for that purpose. “I think” softens the claim into personal taste, not doctrine. “Not the first two areas” is a neat dodge: he doesn’t rule out change, he just keeps it permanently queued behind safer priorities. It’s the language of preemptive moderation, designed to reassure skittish voters and powerful stakeholders that the machinery of the state will keep humming.

The pairing matters. Transportation is the bloodstream of budgets and patronage: contracts, unions, tolls, highway money, the unglamorous infrastructure that reliably becomes a political minefield. Corrections is worse. It’s where moral argument collides with fear, and where “massive change” triggers images of disorder, not efficiency. By naming these sectors, Weld signals that he understands exactly where reform tends to become expensive, politically punishing, and emotionally combustible.

The phrase “massive change” does extra work, too. It frames ambitious policy as disruptive by definition, setting up incrementalism as the responsible, adult posture. In the late-20th-century governance style Weld represents, competence is often marketed as restraint: don’t spook the markets, don’t spook the suburbs, don’t pick a fight with institutions that can make your life miserable.

Subtext: I’m open to modernization in theory, but I’m not here to start wars with the departments that can derail an administration. It’s less a policy position than a survival strategy, delivered with the calm cadence of someone who knows where the political bodies are buried.