Jim Baird: “Absolutely. I cannot tell my colleague the numbers of people, fine, decent, upstanding people, who would make…”

“Absolutely. I cannot tell my colleague the numbers of people, fine, decent, upstanding people, who would make outstanding representatives at all levels of government, who come to me and say, what is it like? I have to tell them that I believe being a representative to the United States Congress is the highest privilege, the highest honor one could ever aspire to, but it is a tremendous responsibility as well. That is the positive side. What I hate to have to tell people, but I do, because it is, unfortunately, the truth, that if they want to serve today in the United States Congress, and if they are from a district that is competitive, they need to be prepared not to study the issues as well as they wish they could, not to have as much time as they wish they had to meet the people, not to spend time with their family sometimes, but that they need to be prepared, regrettably, to attach themselves to a telephone and become basically a phone solicitor. That is a tragedy. It is nothing short of a tragedy. When Jefferson and Madison and Mason and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Fathers of this country, were establishing this great Nation, they did not envision, in their wildest imagination, that good people, people who they inspire every day by their example, would be tied to a telephone asking for money. They did not envision that all the wonderful people who care about the democracy would feel that dollars sometimes mean more than votes. That is wrong.…”