“Nobody I know twists anybody’s arm.”

That’s an excuse. That really is an excuse. I mean first of all we don’t twist arms. Our efforts are to inform, educate, and to hopefully persuade people, not what the right policy is. Nobody I know twists anybody’s arm. That’s an excuse. I mean look, we’re a democracy for heaven’s sake. We can’t blame anybody else if things don’t happen right in our county. It’s our country. I told you my life story __________. I came from a place where if anybody would have predicted I’d be in the United States Congress one day, they would have been laughed out of church. It just wasn’t supposed to happen, but it happens in our country. It can happen and does happen everywhere in this country – that folks coming from every walk of life get to serve. What’s the percentage of lawyers you think in the United States House? When I ask that question to people, everybody says, “Oh, it’s 60, 70 percent.” You know the number is like 28 percent. Most of the people who serve in government come from every walk of life. They come from all sorts of little communities across this country. We own this country. We run this country. If we leave it to others to do it for us, or if we do a bad job of appointing our managers, that’s our fault, nobody else’s.

Recorded on: 9/11/07