Richard Lugar Quotes
We believe - most polls indicate - a lack of support, a lack of confidence in the ability of the Congress to work. That is disturbing in terms of our general democracy.
Lugar, Richard G. Interview. Morning Edition, NPR, 2015.
We live in a time where people are losing confidence in the ability of Government to solve problems.
The public confidence in government had hit an historical low during the administration of George W. Bush during which his administration was riddled with ideologues who had little competence and less inclination to solve problems. However even in those cases where the Bush administration wanted to succeed, they usually failed producing such fiascos as Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, shipping nuclear weapons components my mistake to Taiwan, illegal disclosure of the identity of CIA covert agents, and others.
This was much more the case in 1840 when this quotation was written. Since then, a much higher proportion of American society has become educated, and the cultures that American immigrants have come from had multiplied. Publications abounded and after radio and television there were more attacks on American majority positions. The major change came with radio call in talk shows, similar TV shows and then the Internet provided a painless way to publicly go against majority opinion. By the first decade of the 21st century, movements of majority rejectionists such as the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement were thriving and “futile contests” received much public attention and showed that there were others with the non-majority views who made it socially acceptable to be outside the norms of the majority.
In the 2000 Presidential Election, Gore won the popular vote, but the electoral votes were so close that the winner depended on a single state, Florida. However, that state’s election process was poor and there were many irregularities and problems in vote counting and recounting. The Republican Secretary of State stated that the Republican candidate won, but the irregularities persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to order a recount. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court which decided to stop the recount, giving the Presidency to Bush. All nine Supreme Court Justices were unhappy that they had to decide a case which determined who the President would be, but if they had refused to hear the case, the raw politics of Florida would determine the President. Stevens wrote this quotation in his dissent, and ironically it was about the only thing that the nine justices all agreed to—that the nation’s confidence in the Supreme Court and the legal system was the loser. There was no way for the court to win, unless they could have mustered an overwhelming majority for one side or the other. That proved impossible, so all the justices tried to make the best of a bad situation in which they had been placed.
Richard Green Lugar was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Indiana from 1977 to 2013. He was a member of the Republican Party.
