I used to sit on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder why the Senate was always going into recess, until in my first year I realized how intense the pressure was.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Making recess appointments when the Senate isn't in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It's a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.
Is it any wonder, why the approval ratings of the Congress go up every time we go into recess?
I loved being in the Senate. That was a wonderful experience.
The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.
A funny thing happened on the way to the election - I got to the Senate first.
One reason the Founding Fathers thought that states should have two senators was so that smaller states wouldn't get run over and could bring their interests to the attention of the Senate more broadly.
One of the reasons that the Senate was structured and founded the way it is, as opposed to the House, it was designed for gridlock. It was designed to stop massive new laws being passed and voted on daily. It was designed to stop the growth of government.
I am continuing to explore a run in the Senate from Connecticut, absolutely exploring it. In fact, I would say exploring it intensely.
It used to be in the Senate that if you were filibustering, you stood up. There was a physical dimension to it, that you - when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the filibuster.
Too many of my Senate colleagues overdid it. They stayed on too long - napping through committee hearings when they should have packed up and gone home.