Politics & Power Quote by Marty Meehan

A politician accusing another administration of losing the "moral high ground" is doing more than registering disapproval; he is trying to reclaim the national brand. Marty Meehan’s line frames U.S. power as a kind of reputation economy: leadership isn’t just aircraft carriers and trade deals, it’s credibility. By invoking a “we used to occupy,” he taps into a nostalgia voters can share without needing a detailed policy brief. The phrase flatters the audience’s self-image (America as principled) while indicting specific leaders for squandering it.

The rhetorical move is surgical: “Under the leadership of” pins causality on Bush and Cheney, not on faceless institutions or inevitable post-9/11 dynamics. It’s accountability language, tailored for hearings, cable hits, and campaign trail repetition. “Given up” implies choice, not accident; “moral high ground” implies a vantage point that makes everything else - diplomacy, coalition-building, even military action - easier because others trust your stated aims.

In context, this critique lands in the shadow of the early 2000s: Iraq’s contested justification, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, “enhanced interrogation,” and a broader sense that the War on Terror blurred lines the U.S. once claimed to enforce. Meehan isn’t only condemning; he’s warning about consequences: when a superpower looks hypocritical, allies hedge, adversaries recruit, and American rhetoric about democracy starts sounding like marketing copy. The subtext is blunt: you can’t lead the world if the world stops believing you.