Politics & Power Quote by Jerry Costello

“Clean, safe water” is doing double duty here: it’s a basic public-health promise and a quietly expansive political mandate. Jerry Costello’s phrasing turns an everyday expectation (turn on the tap, don’t get sick) into a civic project with moral stakes. “Maintaining” is the tell. It suggests water safety isn’t a one-time infrastructure ribbon-cutting; it’s ongoing work that can slip backward through neglect, aging pipes, lax enforcement, or climate stress. The verb smuggles in an argument for steady funding and regulation without saying “taxes” or “EPA.”

Calling it a “national and global” challenge also widens the frame strategically. Domestically, it cues bread-and-butter governance: municipal systems, industrial pollution, agricultural runoff, and the unglamorous maintenance budgets politicians routinely underplay. Globally, it taps into humanitarian credibility and U.S. leadership, implying that water scarcity and contamination aren’t foreign problems so much as shared destabilizers that feed migration, conflict, and economic volatility. It’s the kind of line that fits both a local press conference about sewer upgrades and a policy speech about international development.

The subtext is accountability disguised as consensus. No partisan trigger words, no villains named, just “responsibilities” - a term that flatters the listener into agreement while pressuring institutions to act. It’s political language at its most effective: sober, inclusive, and hard to argue with, while still pointing toward concrete choices about infrastructure investment, environmental oversight, and long-term resilience.