Politics & Power Quote by Jim Costa

Costa’s line is the kind of bipartisan hymn politicians sing when the ground is shaking under them. By insisting that party “does not matter,” he’s not erasing partisanship so much as trying to route around it. The rhetorical move is classic: shift the argument from ideology (where every voter has a team) to managerial virtues (where everyone can claim to be on the side of “competence”). “Accountability and competence” are safe words, nearly impossible to oppose, and that’s the point: they function as a neutral refuge when the actual dispute is politically radioactive.

The subtext is sharper than the civility varnish suggests. When a politician foregrounds accountability, it usually implies someone has not been held accountable. When they underline competence, it hints at perceived dysfunction, scandal, or a governance failure that’s become legible to ordinary people. Costa isn’t just praising a national character trait; he’s quietly indicting the alternative without naming a culprit, letting listeners supply their own villain depending on their priors.

His repetition of “great” and the sweep of “throughout our great land” is performative unity, a patriotic wide-angle lens meant to make the claim feel obvious rather than contested. It’s also a defensive posture: by wrapping a standards-based argument in national identity, he reframes scrutiny as American common sense, not partisan attack. In a polarized era, that’s less naïveté than strategy: you launder a specific dispute through a value statement, then invite the public to judge on “competence” instead of tribe.