Leadership Quote by Ron Kind

Ron Kind’s line is doing two pieces of political work at once: it frames energy as pocketbook pain, and it smuggles a national-security argument into a kitchen-table complaint. “We have seen” isn’t just a recap; it’s a bid for consensus, a reminder that the audience doesn’t need a lecture because they’ve already lived it. He’s invoking price spikes, recessions, and the slow drip of money flowing out of the country every time gas jumps overnight. The verb choice matters: “dependence” sounds like policy failure, but “addiction” adds moral texture, implying compulsion, denial, and a habit we keep feeding even when we know better.

The subtext is aimed at a familiar American anxiety: that something as basic as commuting or heating a home can be held hostage by forces offshore. By specifying “foreign oil,” Kind signals vulnerability to geopolitics without naming wars, OPEC, or unstable regions. It’s a safer, more flexible move; listeners can fill in their own villains, from hostile regimes to faceless global markets.

Contextually, this fits a long bipartisan tradition, especially after the oil shocks of the 1970s and later after 9/11 and the 2008 price surge, of using energy independence as a unifying banner. Economically is the operative adverb: it narrows the debate to jobs, trade deficits, and consumer costs, making a case for domestic production, efficiency, or renewables without committing to which coalition he’s courting. The rhetoric is pragmatic, but the emotional lever is pride: we shouldn’t be this exposed.