There's a total separation between the federal government and the people. So running for president was an attempt on my part to get people to care enough to go vote. But people just don't bother. And that's why it's not working.
I was talking to Marylanders... What we were hearing, everywhere, was an overwhelming sense of frustration. People felt a huge disconnect between Annapolis and the rest of Maryland.
We filed a constitutional rights lawsuit on my reservation, and I had to go out and interview all these old people. And I found that many of the old people on my reservation didn't know who was president. That kind of pointed out to me the irrelevance at times of who is in Washington.
What people in Washington worry about - they forget about the people. They forget the mission.
The problem we have is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is a Washington cartel. I've said many times the biggest divide we have politically is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between career politicians in both parties and the American people.
The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.
The people's government has come to be less and less the people's business.
There is a disconnect between Arkansas and Washington, D.C. The career politicians in Washington are not listening to people here in Arkansas, and this is the fundamental problem with politics.
The political class is becoming increasingly alien to the people.
We want a president who is as much like an American tourist as possible. Someone with the same goofy grin, the same innocent intentions, the same naive trust; a president with no conception of foreign policy and no discernible connection to government.
Members of Congress have more in common with the people they hobnob in Washington, D.C., than they do with the people they're supposed to represent.
Election Day 2010 saw the culmination of years of aggravation and resentment toward a federal government that became disconnected and disdainful of the values and priorities of Americans.
