Politics & Power Quote by Warren Rudman

Security, in Warren Rudman’s framing, is never a finished project - it’s a permanent work order. The line opens with a concession designed to reassure: “Significant steps” have already been taken since 9/11. That phrase nods to the post-attack surge of agencies, budgets, new authorities, and reorganized intelligence without having to name the controversial parts. It’s a careful rhetorical move: validate the public’s desire for safety, then pivot to the real ask.

The pivot is the engine: “but much remains to be done.” That’s not just policy appetite; it’s an argument about time. Rudman treats terrorism as an evolving, borderless threat (“global terror”), which implicitly justifies an evolving, potentially expansive domestic response. “Next phase” is a bureaucrat’s euphemism that simultaneously sounds orderly and urgent. It suggests strategy, not panic - and it leaves the contents conveniently open-ended for legislation, funding, and institutional change.

The insistence that “Americans from across the political spectrum must come together” is less kumbaya than countermeasure. By invoking unity, Rudman tries to pre-empt two predictable post-9/11 fractures: civil-liberties backlash and partisan opportunism. Unity becomes a shield for legitimacy: if everyone is on board, the next set of tools - surveillance, coordination, enforcement powers - can be sold as national necessity rather than ideological preference.

Context matters: Rudman, long associated with national-security oversight and reform-minded governance, is speaking in the language of commissions and consensus. The subtext is blunt: the country has acted, but not enough; the public should accept that “home” will be governed differently for a while, possibly indefinitely.