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Ironically enough, why I got into politics is because I came to the conclusion that if you wanted to save the world, which in my mind was through the environment, those elected officials seemed to be the ones who made a lot of the important decisions, if not the most important decisions.
I believe the people of Wisconsin elected me because I said I will work with anyone - doesn't matter if they're a Republican or a Democrat - I just want to get things done for Wisconsin families. But I also believe Wisconsinites elected me because I will always put people before politics.
'Three Billboards,' which is not based on a true story but does have some reality flavoring, must appear worthy of elected office in some way. This was, at first, the illusion presented by the people running the campaigns and, in turn, over the years, has become the custom for lots of us.
I have found myself under a wave of investigation and criticism from the moment I was elected. Since my first days in the Prime Minister's Office I have had to fight against evil attacks while I have been busy making decisions on crucial matters related to Israel's security and existence.
I will be the first to admit that getting votes and getting an audience are two different things. For example, a politician really can't be elected if he's hated by half the people. A talk show host, however, can be an overwhelming national phenomenon while being hated by half the people.
Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.
I am honored to have heard from so many voters, supporters, and local elected officials who have been pleased with the work I have done on their behalf. They want and deserve a leader who will aggressively pursue strong conservative policies and get results. That's exactly what I have done.
American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.
According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.
Office holders are a self-selected group; you don't get elected if you don't put your name on the ballot. There are many people who would do a great job, but who would never think to run. Find them. Badger them. Get them elected. They might not thank you for it, but a lot of other people will.
I'm elected. I don't report to any politician. I report to the people. If I had to report to any politician, I'd quit tomorrow. I'm not tall, dark and handsome. They don't vote for me because I look like a movie star. I can't get that vote. People keep voting for me because they like what I do.
At the end of the day, every member of the conservative movement, from our political commentators and thinkers to our elected officials, share an important and common purpose in advancing the cause of liberty, reigning in a bloated federal government, and defending our traditional family values.
I took on pension reform, health care reform, and leave reform - all of those tough issues that so many elected officials prefer to kick down the road to the next generation. But that's not who I am. I am not persuaded by what is politically popular but what is best for the citizens of Baltimore.
But, you know, we have these entrenched entities - and I'm talking about both Republicans and Democrats - who believe that when you're elected to office, you become some kind of member of the aristocracy, and that anyone who challenges you is attacking you and is unpatriotic. This is foolishness.
We are all socialists now, it seems. John McCain, David Cameron and Gordon Brown attack bankers' irresponsible behaviour and salaries, and call for state intervention in the financial markets. But these calls will not get them elected or re-elected if they are addressed only to the banking sector.
I'm the most pro-liberty elected official statewide in my lifetime. It isn't even a close call, so for people who care about protecting liberty, there's never been - again, in my lifetime in Virginia - a statewide elected official who's been as aggressive and consistent about doing that as I have.
Well, the elected officials in both parties are receiving campaign contributions and support through electioneering communications from groups that aren't technically affiliated with the campaigns, but really are. That's the off-the-books financing of electioneering communications that's going on.
Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades.
If peace activists really want to make changes, they have to start putting intense pressure on their elected officials. Of course, everything should be non-violent, because we are trying to create a peaceful world, and violence can't produce peace - no matter what George W. Bush and his buddies say.
I started in the mailroom, literally, as an intern... in 1974. The legislator I was working for at the time said, 'I want you to get your law degree and come back here and get elected and be the first woman governor.' I kind of took that guy seriously - I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea.
Three years ago, this week, a newly elected President Obama faced the American people and he said, look, if I can't turn this economy around in three years, I'll be looking at a one-term proposition, and we're here to collect! You know the results. It's been 35 months of unemployment above 8 percent.
Unsurprisingly, the poll-takers don't talk a lot in public about the ignorance of the electorate on political and public policy matters. And the politicians are not going to disclose the, let's say, limited body of knowledge in their constituencies. You don't get elected calling your voters airheads.
When I was seven, I had to stay home for several weeks because of some ailment, whereupon my father elected to teach me so that I should not fall behind. In fact, he taught me in three months as much as the school taught in two years, so, on returning to school, I was shifted from grade 4 to grade 6.
Everyone says Francois Mitterrand had huge charisma. But before he was president they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic and say he knew nothing about the economy... until the day he was elected. It's called universal suffrage. When you're elected, you become the person that embodies France.
If we had a flat tax code rather than a 70,000-page document full of cronyism and favors, bureaucrats and elected officials wouldn't have the power to do you any favors. That's what we need. You would have to compete on your own on a level playing field, but that's not what the government permits now.
If elected, I will work with federal leaders to rehouse the non-immigration enforcement functions of ICE - including human trafficking and money laundering investigations - elsewhere in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security while immediately eliminating funding for enforcement and removal functions.
We need to ask elected officials supporting Keystone XL whether they're willing to put their constituents and our environment at risk so that foreign oil tycoons get a better return on their tar sands investments. Keystone XL backers will keep trying to sell us a sucker's deal; it's up to us to say no.
The reason Donald Trump was elected was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you look at the voter data, it shows that the higher the level of concentration of manufacturing robots in a district, the more that district voted for Trump.
We know that greater participation in our democracy will make our government more responsible and make elected officials more representative of the people we serve. Making that participation easier while improving the integrity and security of our elections is something we should all be able to support.
In some ways, it's better that Obama got elected than McCain. I'd rather be stabbed in the chest with an Obama steak knife than to have been slowly bled to death with McCain paper cuts. Say what you will, but Obama has brought about a patriotic and civic renaissance, the likes of which I have never seen.
The day after Donald Trump was elected, Chinese business leaders, including the heads of Baidu, stood up and gave a speech saying, 'Come to China and build your company now.' The cognitive dissonance of that was amazing for some of us to think we might be losing our leadership role in building companies.
You know, when we get to a point in this country where dissent is extremism, we've turned, I think, a very dark page in our history. And I don't want us to go there. I encourage Americans and I'm - right now, to go to these town hall meetings, to - to talk to your Congressmen, the people that you elected.
In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place.
Barack Obama was elected during my second year of college, and save for his skin color, he had much in common with Bill Clinton: Despite an unstable life with a single mother, aided by two loving grandparents, he had made in his adulthood a family life that seemed to embody my sense of the American ideal.
I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.
From before I was born, we Arabs have been caught between two forces that, seemingly, cannot be defeated: our ruthless dictators, who oppress and humiliate us, and the cynical western powers, who would rather see us ruled by criminals loyal to them than have democratically elected leaders accountable to us.
Anytime a member of Congress wants to travel abroad - which we do from time to time as part of our official duties - we are required to check with the House Committee on Ethics as to whether the trip follows the ethics rules by which federally elected officials are bound. Not so with Supreme Court justices.
The debt-ceiling vote isn't about what will be done in the future; it is about the integrity of America's commitment to support the bonds we issue. Elected officials have an obligation to maintain that integrity, regardless of whether they voted for the programs that required the borrowing in the first place.
The Constitution is constant. There's not one elected official who has the power to change it. There is a way to amend the Constitution, and the Constitution spells out the procedures that must be taken to change it. Presidents cannot. Now, I know this is gonna shock many of you in the low-information community.
The presidency of the United States is a very unique elected position. So if anything merits a longer vetting process, the presidency does to some extent. In general our election cycles are too long, but this job is so consequential that I don't think it's a bad thing to give people more time to get to know you.
The Supreme Court's most conservative Justices have presented themselves as great respecters of precedent and opponents of 'judicial activism' - of judges using the Constitution to strike down laws passed by the elected branches of government. If they are true to those principles, they should uphold rent control.
Europe has shown how government can be organised in a network. Its institutions both compete and co-operate and include a directly elected parliament that does not appoint the executive, independent judiciaries and a complex set of relationships between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.
I think it's incumbent upon elected officials to make sure that, if we're going to demand more tax money from people, that we use it in a productive manner and not just say, 'This is what we're going to use it for,' and then they find out that it was used for something else and sometimes something very frivolous.
I was elected by the people of Australia as Prime Minister of Australia. I was elected to do a job, I intend to continue doing that job. I intend to continue doing it to the absolute best of my ability. Part of that job has been to steer this country through the worst economic crisis the world has seen in 75 years.
Most critical histories of U.S. involvement in Iran rightly began with the joint British-U.S. coup against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, which installed Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne. But it was Kissinger who, in 1972, greatly deepened the relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.
John Quincy Adams ranks with Jimmy Carter on the roster of ex-presidential redemption. Instead of completing a biography of his father, he let himself be elected to the House, where he spent nine terms in Whiggish opposition to the Democrats, supporting a national bank and a protective tariff and internal improvements.
The women's movement gave me a set of tools to think about things like my body and how people react to me and the way that my dating life was going. It's a very practical movement - yes, it's about issues like how we can get more women MPs elected, but it's also about how feminism affects things like your relationship.
Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.
As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.