Leadership Quote by Mike Johanns

The sentence tries to do three jobs at once: reassure, unify, and claim competence. “One of the things that I always say” signals a practiced line, not a fresh thought - the kind of prefabricated reassurance politicians reach for when the topic is too frightening to get specific about. Bioterrorism demands details (preparedness gaps, lab security, supply chains), but Johanns steers toward a safer rhetorical terrain: collective effort and incremental progress.

The real engine here is the list of institutions: “ourselves at the federal level, folks at the state level, or folks in the private industry.” It’s coalition language designed to spread ownership and, quietly, dilute blame. By flattening everyone into “folks,” he creates a conversational tone that softens the implication that government failures could be deadly. The subtext is: don’t panic, the adults are coordinating - and no single actor should be singled out if something goes wrong.

“Especially since 9/11” is the emotional lever. It invokes a cultural marker that still functions as an all-purpose warrant for expanded security measures and bureaucratic reorganization. The phrase also smuggles in a retrospective justification: we responded, we learned, we built capacity. Notice what’s missing: any admission of ongoing vulnerability. Saying “we’ve done many great things” is intentionally non-falsifiable, a way to project strength without inviting follow-up questions about budgets, readiness metrics, or concrete outcomes.

In context, this is crisis-adjacent governance talk: soothing, inclusive, strategically vague - built to maintain confidence while avoiding the specifics that would create political risk.