Leadership Quote by Mary Landrieu

Landrieu’s line is a tight piece of Gulf Coast political jiu-jitsu: she takes an accusation of industry boosterism and flips it into a populist defense of the corner store, the shrimp boat, the welders, the subcontractors. The opening cadence - “I’m fighting for… I’m not fighting for…” - is courtroom language, built to sound like cross-examination. “Don’t be confused” isn’t clarification; it’s a warning shot at critics who want to collapse “jobs” into “Big Oil” and call it corruption.

The subtext is transactional and regional: Washington can afford moral distance, but Louisiana can’t afford unemployment. When she says the country “keeps guzzling the oil,” she’s indicting national hypocrisy while protecting herself from the charge that she’s defending fossil fuels as a principle. Americans want the product, she implies; they just don’t want to see the messy machinery that delivers it, especially when that machinery fails. “We’re out of work down here” turns an environmental or regulatory dispute into a question of fairness: who bears the cost of the nation’s appetite?

Context matters: Landrieu is speaking from a state whose economy is braided with energy, ports, and offshore services, where a spill, a moratorium, or a permitting slowdown ricochets far beyond corporate balance sheets. “Get back to work” is doing double duty - rallying cry, pressure tactic, and permission structure. She’s not absolving the industry; she’s insisting the region shouldn’t be the sacrificial zone for a country that won’t give up what it consumes.