A national financial collapse can engender a heightened gubernatorial sense of accountability, leadership, and learning. An attempt at theory building on this theme uses governors’ 2009 speeches as an historical artifact and policy document recording the kind of rhetoric they employed during the "Great Recession." A quantitative analysis reveals correlations between gubernatorial characteristics and rhetoric. A qualitative approach yields gubernatorial constructs of accountability, leadership, and learning at a time of crisis. The results offer a foundation for further theory building using cross-sectional and longitudinal data.