Political Quotes

“I rise to speak from the floor for the first time. I have never been in politics before, and I intentionally waited to speak here. I wish to talk about the historic purposes and uses of the Senate, about the decades-long decline of the legislature relative to the executive branch, and about what baby steps toward institutional recovery might look like. Before doing so, let me explain briefly why I chose to wait a year since election day before beginning to fully engage in floor debate. I have done two things in my adult work life. I am a historian by training and a strategy guy by vocation. Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations through some very ugly strategic crises, and one important lesson I have learned again and again when you walk into any broken organization is that there is a very delicate balance between expressing human empathy on the one hand and not becoming willing to passively sweep hard truths under the rug on the other. It is essential to listen first, to ask questions first, and to learn how a broken institution got to where it is because there are reasons. People very rarely try to break special institutions that they inherit. Things fray and break for reasons. Still, empathy cannot change the reality that a bankrupt company is costing more to produce its products than customers are willing to pay for them, that a college that has too few students is out not only of money but out of spirit.…”