Leadership Quote by Janet Napolitano

Anger is doing double duty here: it’s emotional punctuation, and it’s a governing strategy. Napolitano’s line frames a fuel shortage not as an unfortunate disruption but as a failure of competence by an industry that likes to market itself as indispensable. The phrase “supposed to be in charge” is a pointed rebuke to the ideological premise that the private sector is inherently more efficient. She’s not attacking capitalism in the abstract; she’s indicting a specific promise the market makes in exchange for being left alone: keep the essentials moving.

The construction also performs a political jujitsu. By calling the situation “critical,” she pre-justifies intervention before critics can label it overreach. “Doesn’t have its act together” is deliberately colloquial, almost parental. It shrinks corporate logistics and regulatory complexity into a simple moral of responsibility: you had the job, you dropped it. That language is useful because it makes a potentially controversial policy move feel like basic adult supervision.

The subtext is about legitimacy and blame management. In moments of scarcity, the public doesn’t parse supply chains; they ask who’s accountable. Napolitano casts the private sector as the proximate culprit and the public sector as the reluctant backstop. “Now the public sector has to step in” signals necessity, not preference, positioning government as the provider of last resort when markets falter. It’s a reminder that “small government” arguments tend to evaporate when the pumps run dry.