Leadership Quote by Susan Davis

Relief is a carefully chosen emotion for a politician to perform in public: it suggests a crisis narrowly averted without naming who caused the crisis in the first place. Susan Davis’ line is built to signal vigilance and steadiness, the kind of low-drama reassurance constituents want from someone whose job is to watch budgets, oversight hearings, and Pentagon promises. “Will remain high” is the operative phrase. It’s not a boast about new capability; it’s a pledge of continuity, the political equivalent of keeping the lights on.

The subtext is a triangulation between two audiences that don’t always align: military communities who measure support in readiness rates, training cycles, and equipment availability; and skeptical taxpayers who hear “defense” and anticipate blank checks. By anchoring the statement to “readiness” rather than “spending” or “war,” Davis frames the Marines as a protective institution rather than an instrument of intervention. Readiness is also conveniently non-ideological: who’s going to argue for unprepared troops?

Contextually, this kind of sentence tends to appear around appropriations fights, base-related announcements, or moments when the services are under stress - deployments, maintenance backlogs, recruiting shortfalls, or debates over force reductions. The passive construction (“the state… will remain high”) lets the speaker claim credit while staying insulated from the messier tradeoffs: what got cut to keep readiness up, what risks were accepted elsewhere, and which conflicts readiness is implicitly preparing for. It’s reassurance with a paper trail.