Leadership Quote by Susan Collins

Collins frames fear as housekeeping: not panic, not prophecy, just a sensible question about whether we should be "beefing up". That choice of verb matters. It’s colloquial, almost locker-room practical, designed to sound like common sense rather than a policy lurch. In a post-attack global climate, the line borrows urgency from "other countries" while keeping the danger safely offshore, a rhetorical move that lets listeners feel both threatened and reasonable at the same time.

The intent is political triage. By invoking attacks abroad, Collins creates a permission structure for expanded security without having to cite a specific domestic failure. The phrase "mass transit systems" is tellingly broad: it conjures subways, trains, buses, the everyday arteries of public life. It’s not just about infrastructure; it’s about the anxiety of crowded, shared space in an era when vulnerability feels like a design flaw.

"Clearly more could be done" is the classic Washington sentence that signals action while avoiding commitment. "Clearly" implies consensus; "could" preserves deniability. The subtext is: if something happens here, no one wants to be accused of having ignored the warning. It also nudges bureaucracies toward visible measures (more cameras, more patrols, more checkpoints) because visibility reads as competence, even when effectiveness is harder to prove.

Contextually, this is security politics at its most durable: a vague but vivid threat, a modest-sounding escalation, and language calibrated to expand the perimeter of government response without naming the costs, tradeoffs, or civil-liberties friction that inevitably follows.