Politics & Power Quote by Marc Morial

This is crisis rhetoric in a suit: an appeal to authority designed to calm a terrified public without promising the impossible. Marc Morial reaches for the Society of American Civil Engineers not because most people know what it does, but because the name itself sounds like a seal, a gavel, a laboratory. In the wake of disasters where infrastructure fails and official assurances curdle into scandal, the most precious commodity isn’t optimism; it’s credibility. So he borrows it.

The quote is structured like a relay handoff. Elected officials, he implies, shouldn’t be the ones certifying levees, pumps, repairs. A neutral, technical body should. That move quietly acknowledges a political vulnerability: if government tells you the system is safe and it isn’t, the fallout is moral and electoral. Outsourcing the verdict to engineers spreads responsibility while signaling seriousness.

The hedging is doing heavy lifting. “We’ve looked at, we’ve examined, we’ve reviewed” stacks near-synonyms to mimic due diligence. “Strong enough to withstand the type of hurricane that could hit the city this season” narrows the promise to a probabilistic window, not an absolute guarantee. It’s reassurance with an escape hatch, the kind leaders learn to build after watching “never again” collide with weather and physics.

Contextually, it speaks to a post-Katrina America where public trust in infrastructure and institutions is frayed. The subtext: we know you don’t believe us anymore, so we’re bringing in someone you might.