William Tauzin: “Or Taco Bell, I should not fail to mention Taco Bell--had instead of talking about the good quality of their products…”

“Or Taco Bell, I should not fail to mention Taco Bell--had instead of talking about the good quality of their products, of their tacos and their hamburgers, if they had instead for 10 years got on television and talked about how rotten and awful and cancer-causing these products were, people would not be choosing between Taco Bell and Burger King and McDonald's. They would turn off on the whole mess. They would not go to fast-food restaurants anymore. The point is, our politics has led us to that. Our negative campaigning and our politics has led us to the point where the American public has kind of turned off on so much of the process by which we get elected. Then we come to this Chamber and we confuse our role again. We think we are all campaigning still, and we get into these heated fights, these partisan debates, these acrimonious accusations. There is questioning of motives, this attribution of ill intent, all these things we do as though we are still campaigning and running negative ads against one another. The art of governing is something else. The art of governing is putting the election behind you and debating ideas, and seeing which ideas have force and which have power and which can compel a majority to support them, and which make better common sense for the good of all the people of our country.”