Leadership Quote by Barbara Jordan

Reason is doing triple duty here: it has to guide deliberations, debate, and the final decision. Barbara Jordan’s repetition isn’t ornamental; it’s a procedural demand. She’s laying down a standard for legitimacy at a moment when legitimacy itself was under strain, insisting that democratic power only counts when it moves through rules, evidence, and argument rather than the heat of the crowd.

The specific intent is disciplinary. Jordan isn’t pretending passion doesn’t exist; she’s warning that it’s the easiest fuel to hijack in a crisis. In American politics, “passion” often arrives wearing a moral costume: outrage as virtue, certainty as courage. Jordan punctures that romance. She frames reason as the only trustworthy referee because it can be shared, scrutinized, and recorded. Passion is private; reason has to survive in public.

The subtext is also a rebuke to political theater. “Debate” can become performance, “deliberations” can become stalling, “decision” can become a foregone conclusion dressed up as process. By making reason the common verb that governs all three stages, Jordan is calling out anyone trying to smuggle in outcomes through spectacle, tribal loyalty, or a pre-written script.

Context matters: Jordan spoke in an era when constitutional norms were being stress-tested in full view of the nation, and her own position as a Black woman in Congress sharpened the stakes. She’s not offering a civics-lesson platitude; she’s asserting that the system only earns obedience if it demonstrates restraint. Reason, in her hands, is both moral posture and political weapon.