Leadership Quote by John Ensign

The line tries to smuggle a policy argument through the back door of common sense. John Ensign isn’t really asking a question; he’s framing a complaint in the language of inevitability: other metros have multiple airports that “compete,” so Dallas-Fort Worth should too. It’s a neat rhetorical move because it converts a messy fight about governance, gate access, and airline leverage into a simple marketplace parable. If San Francisco can “compete” with Oakland, why can’t you?

The subtext is aimed at a very specific American pressure point: frustration with entrenched monopolies and sweetheart arrangements. In the DFW region, airport politics have long been bound up with the Wright Amendment era, when Dallas Love Field and DFW Airport were effectively locked into a managed coexistence. Ensign’s comparisons aren’t neutral; they’re selective. Oakland isn’t just a plucky competitor to SFO - it’s a structurally different airport with a different airline mix, cost base, and land-use footprint. Midway’s “competition” with O’Hare is also the product of history and geography, not a clean case study in deregulated triumph.

As a politician, Ensign is also laundering a partisan instinct through civic pragmatism: competition equals lower fares, more routes, happier consumers. But the question carefully avoids naming who benefits and who loses. “Compete” can mean cheaper tickets, yes; it can also mean shifting noise, congestion, and tax burdens between cities, while airlines arbitrage the system. The brilliance of the phrasing is that it makes opposition sound anti-competitive, even anti-modern, without ever admitting the trade-offs.