Politics & Power Quote by Jane D. Hull

The line lands with the brisk confidence of a political memo: the country was hurt, the president issued a directive, the public complied. Jane D. Hull is doing more than summarizing a post-9/11 mood; she is endorsing a governing style that treats national trauma as a management problem. “Right after the tragedy” compresses grief into a timestamp, clearing rhetorical space for action. “Asked” softens what is effectively an instruction, a familiar maneuver in democratic leadership: coercion reframed as consensual civic duty.

The most loaded phrase is “get on with their lives.” It sounds humane, even therapeutic, but it also doubles as an economic and ideological cue. In the early 2000s, “normalcy” wasn’t just emotional recovery; it meant keeping markets steady, keeping consumption humming, projecting national resilience as a kind of brand. Hull’s “and we did” is the applause line: a claim of unity, discipline, and moral sturdiness. It’s also a subtle rebuke of dissent or lingering pain. If “we” complied, then those who didn’t - who questioned policy, who stayed afraid, who mourned longer, who protested the wars that followed - become the implied outliers.

Context matters: this is post-crisis rhetoric that converts vulnerability into a test of citizenship. The subtext is that the proper response to trauma is not introspection but forward motion, preferably in alignment with executive leadership. It’s an efficient story: a wounded nation, a steady hand, a compliant public. Efficient stories are politically useful, even when they sand down the messy, uneven reality of recovery.