"You see, we all want the same things. We want to be able to take care of our families, provide for our children, to have a roof over our heads and a good-paying job"
About this Quote
That warm, kitchen-table unanimity is doing political heavy lifting. Hastert’s line pulls off a classic move: erase conflict by collapsing the audience into a single, decent “we” defined by obligations (family, children) and basic material security (roof, job). It’s hard to argue with, which is the point. The sentence isn’t aimed at informing; it’s engineered to pre-empt dissent. If everyone “wants the same things,” then policy disagreement starts to look like misunderstanding, elitism, or bad faith.
The intent is coalition-building through moral common sense. Family provision reads as virtue, not ideology. “Good-paying job” smuggles in an economic promise without naming who’s responsible for wages, what “good” means, or what trade-offs come with getting there. The line’s vagueness is strategic: it invites listeners to project their own anxieties about stagnating income, job insecurity, and status loss onto a candidate or party that can claim to be speaking for “ordinary people.”
Context matters because Hastert isn’t a civic poet; he’s a party operator, long associated with message discipline and suburban, middle-American symbolism. This is the language of a politician trying to sound post-partisan while quietly defining the “real” public as breadwinners and parents. People without children, people whose work doesn’t fit the stable-job ideal, or anyone seeking rights beyond economic security are implicitly pushed to the margins.
Knowing Hastert’s later scandal, the subtext darkens: the rhetoric of protecting families functions as a moral credential. It’s a reminder that “family values” language often operates less as an ethical guarantee than as political camouflage.
The intent is coalition-building through moral common sense. Family provision reads as virtue, not ideology. “Good-paying job” smuggles in an economic promise without naming who’s responsible for wages, what “good” means, or what trade-offs come with getting there. The line’s vagueness is strategic: it invites listeners to project their own anxieties about stagnating income, job insecurity, and status loss onto a candidate or party that can claim to be speaking for “ordinary people.”
Context matters because Hastert isn’t a civic poet; he’s a party operator, long associated with message discipline and suburban, middle-American symbolism. This is the language of a politician trying to sound post-partisan while quietly defining the “real” public as breadwinners and parents. People without children, people whose work doesn’t fit the stable-job ideal, or anyone seeking rights beyond economic security are implicitly pushed to the margins.
Knowing Hastert’s later scandal, the subtext darkens: the rhetoric of protecting families functions as a moral credential. It’s a reminder that “family values” language often operates less as an ethical guarantee than as political camouflage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
|---|
More Quotes by Dennis
Add to List
