Communications Commentary

"I was the chief author of seven bills that I brought to the Senate floor, every one of those passed. But what was remarkable was every one of those bills... passed unanimously. That means 420, yes, votes came in on my bills, and no navels. And the reason was, I went to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I spoke with them. I don't like this division. Frankly, I don't even like the tenor of this conversation we're having today because it feels like it's banging up against each other. I think that Mike and I could probably, if we were over a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, we would hammer on some common ground. And we'd say, OK, how can we expand that? That's what we need to do. But I don't see the commitment there. I see this, this willingness to move from a shared mere disagreement, and just go straight to contempt. And we've got to find a way around it, or we're going to be stuck where we’re at... Is there a one of us who doesn’t want kids to be safe in schools and all of us to be secure in public places? Let’s together relentlessly search for common ground in the dialogue on public safety in America."