Wealth & Money Quote by George Voinovich

“Encouraging signs” is the politician’s favorite kind of noun phrase: optimistic enough to calm nerves, vague enough to survive contact with next month’s data. George Voinovich, a pragmatic Midwestern Republican who built his brand on competent stewardship, isn’t trying to win a poetry contest here. He’s trying to manage a public mood. The line is less a verdict than a thermostat setting.

The intent is to project steadiness without overpromising. “Recovery” signals that pain has been real and is now supposedly easing; it invites people to believe the worst is behind them. But the hedges do the real work. “Showing” implies the economy is an object being read, like a chart on a podium, not a system shaped by policy choices that can be debated. “Signs” keeps the claim safely one step removed from outcomes like wages, hiring, foreclosures, or small-business churn. “Encouraging” is emotional, not empirical: it’s an appeal to confidence as a policy tool, the quiet theory that if people believe things are improving, they’ll spend, hire, and invest, helping to make it true.

The subtext is political risk management. If the recovery accelerates, he can say he called it. If it stalls, he can point back to the careful phrasing. It also nudges listeners away from anger and toward patience, a useful posture for incumbents and institutionalists alike.

Contextually, this kind of sentence thrives in post-recession eras, when the electorate is exhausted, experts are split, and leaders need a bridge between bad headlines and better hopes. It’s economic talk as public reassurance: a soft promise wrapped in plausible deniability.