"People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that"
About this Quote
Hewitt’s line reads like a small act of political translation: taking the messiness of private life and turning it into a public ethic. “People are not perfect” isn’t a Hallmark shrug; it’s a pre-emptive strike against purity tests, the fantasy that trust is built by never failing. She frames strength not as compatibility but as repair. The repeated “worked through” matters: resilience is active labor, not a personality trait, and certainly not a miracle.
The subtext is managerial, in the best and most revealing sense. Crisis becomes something you process rather than something that ends you. That’s a recognizably New Labour sensibility from a politician of Hewitt’s era: institutions and relationships don’t need saints, they need systems for recovery. It also quietly shifts responsibility. Crises don’t just happen to you; you’re obligated to do the unglamorous work afterward. There’s empathy here, but also a moral nudge.
Contextually, it fits a public figure speaking in a culture that treats rupture as either scandal or spectacle. Hewitt offers a third category: rupture as a test of capacity. That’s politically legible, too. Parties, governments, even nations survive not by avoiding “big crises” but by building norms that make repair possible: negotiation, compromise, patience with incremental progress.
The most strategic move is the final “So the challenge to us.” She universalizes without sentimentalizing, drafting the audience into a collective project. Not “forgive and forget,” but “stay, face it, fix it” - a surprisingly bracing vision of solidarity.
The subtext is managerial, in the best and most revealing sense. Crisis becomes something you process rather than something that ends you. That’s a recognizably New Labour sensibility from a politician of Hewitt’s era: institutions and relationships don’t need saints, they need systems for recovery. It also quietly shifts responsibility. Crises don’t just happen to you; you’re obligated to do the unglamorous work afterward. There’s empathy here, but also a moral nudge.
Contextually, it fits a public figure speaking in a culture that treats rupture as either scandal or spectacle. Hewitt offers a third category: rupture as a test of capacity. That’s politically legible, too. Parties, governments, even nations survive not by avoiding “big crises” but by building norms that make repair possible: negotiation, compromise, patience with incremental progress.
The most strategic move is the final “So the challenge to us.” She universalizes without sentimentalizing, drafting the audience into a collective project. Not “forgive and forget,” but “stay, face it, fix it” - a surprisingly bracing vision of solidarity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Relationship |
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