Though every legal task demands this skill, it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice?
I don't mean that if you're a Christian, walking close to God, you will immediately gain celebrity. you may fail as an artist, because you may not have what the public want at that time, and you have to be prepared for that.
The public may think I'm weird. They may think I'm crazy or anything that anyone wants to think about me. That's all fine. As long as one of the things you're not thinking about me is that I'm a pedophile. Because that's not true.
I have kept a steady focus on restoring public faith in our state government since taking office July 1. Now it is time to make even bigger and bolder gains through legislative action.
We have the incredible privilege of serving in the highest offices in the state. We must prove ourselves worthy of our fellow citizens' faith. We must be trusted to always place the public's good above our own and to always choose fairness over favoritism.
In many ways, I think that, while we've been remarkably violent in our media, there's been a real schizophrenia. In private, on the Internet, and on public-affairs shows or talk radio, we're way more explicit than we've ever been.
In my 31 years in Congress, I have seen a lot of changes. We made some substantial policy changes that have improved our parks system and our public lands.
The language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction.
People are learning to feel more comfortable hearing one another's dreams. It used to be that if you told a dream in public, someone had to make a joke to relieve the tension introduced by that alternative reality.
In the long run, much public opinion is made in the universities; ideas generated there filter down through the teaching profession and the students into the general public.
