Leadership Quote by Jay Inslee

Inslee’s line is built like a chant, and that’s the point: it turns a wonky energy argument into a moral one. The repetition of “We cannot drill our way…” is a deliberate throttling of an old American reflex - when in doubt, extract more. By stacking “independence,” “freedom,” and “jobs,” he goes after the whole patriotic-sales pitch that has long made fossil fuel expansion sound like civic duty. He’s not just disputing a policy; he’s trying to repossess the language that drilling advocates routinely claim.

The subtext is a rebuke to a particular political myth: that domestic production automatically equals security and prosperity. “Independence” and “freedom” are the emotional decoys in that myth, words that imply vulnerability to foreign powers and insinuate that refusing to drill is a kind of self-sabotage. Inslee’s counter-move is to break the causal chain. Drilling might increase supply; it doesn’t magically insulate prices, prevent geopolitical shocks, or guarantee durable employment. That last clause - “create jobs in this country” - is aimed at the lunch-bucket voter, but it also nods to the boom-and-bust nature of extraction work and the capital-intensive reality of modern drilling.

Context matters: Inslee’s brand is climate-forward governance, and this is the rhetorical bridge from climate concern to pocketbook legitimacy. He’s framing clean energy not as sacrifice, but as the only serious route to the very ideals drilling is marketed to deliver.