Leadership Quote by Bruce Babbitt

Babbitt is doing a politician’s most delicate two-step: turning preservation into a group project rather than a decree. The line opens with a promise of coalition-building ("get everybody together") before it even names the object ("this"), a strategic vagueness that keeps the tent wide. "Protect this for generations to come" reaches for moral high ground - stewardship, legacy, the kind of long timeline that makes short-term sacrifices feel principled instead of painful. It’s also a preemptive rebuttal to the usual Western backlash against federal overreach: if the goal is generational, opponents look like they’re voting against their own grandchildren.

Then he pivots to process. "Get down to work" is the anti-slogan slogan, a way to signal seriousness and dampen ideology. The most revealing phrase is "walk the land". That’s tactile politics: credibility earned by being physically present, listening on-site, and suggesting the land itself has standing in the conversation. In the context of Babbitt’s Interior Department years - when public-lands disputes, grazing rights, water, endangered species, and monument designations routinely detonated into culture war - this is a coded peace offering. He’s acknowledging "conflicts" without picking a side in the sentence, framing them as practical problems to be managed rather than identity battles to be won.

The subtext is that conservation only survives if it can be narrated as local, participatory, and pragmatic. "Get everybody involved" isn’t just democratic rhetoric; it’s a legitimacy shield for whatever hard calls follow.