Politics & Power Quote by John Lynch

Trust is the scarce currency in modern politics, and John Lynch’s line reads like a deliberate attempt to mint more of it. As a career public official, he’s not chasing poetry; he’s staking out a moral baseline that doubles as a policy argument. The phrasing matters: “restore and keep” assumes confidence has already been damaged (not hypothetically, but historically), and that legitimacy is something government can lose through its own behavior. In a single clause, he admits the crisis without naming culprits.

“Integrity of their government” is an elegant bit of distancing. It frames government as belonging to the public, not the officials, which quietly recasts transparency as a civic right rather than a managerial preference. He’s also bundling three virtues - “open, honest and transparent” - that sound synonymous but function strategically. “Open” points to access (meetings, records). “Honest” points to conduct (no fraud, no spin). “Transparent” points to process (how decisions and money move). By stacking them, Lynch tries to close the loopholes politicians often exploit: you can publish documents and still mislead; you can behave cleanly and still govern in the dark.

The subtext is defensive as much as aspirational: if people don’t trust you, you can’t govern effectively, pass budgets, or ask for sacrifice. It’s also a preemptive rebuttal to the usual objections - that secrecy is necessary, that scrutiny is unfair. Lynch is arguing the opposite: scrutiny is the condition for authority, not an obstacle to it.