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July 2017 • SMT Magazine 67 tion on the planet. Let me give you an example, starting at the very, very beginning. That was the summer of 1787 with James Madison and George Washington, two of our most prominent founders. George Washington is the father of our country, our first president, and James Madison, one of the architects of the Constitution. They went into that summer, that Constitutional Convention, very, very close al- lies. They were in lockstep. They were friends. They were working together, and thank God that they did because look at the document that it produced. But at the same time, it creat- ed a lot of anxiety between the two of them to the extent that not too long after that summer ended, George Washington and James Madison never spoke to each other again for the rest of their lives. The point I'm making is: Governing is hard business. It is not easy. Relationships are broken and alliances are built among people that you nev- er thought you would build an alliance with to get movement forward, because if we allow the far left and the far right to dictate the govern- ing process, those groups are extreme. If a num- ber of people in the middle aren't willing to sit down and put relationship aside, like Washing- ton and Madison did, like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did to get big things done, then we're going to stay in a quagmire. Do you un- derstand what I'm saying? Goldman: Yes, I certainly understand. I've read enough history to know that you're right. If it were easy or if it happened quickly, that would mean we had a dictatorship. That's how things happen quickly. Somebody says, "This is the way it is," but we don't work that way. We don't want that. Johnson: I'm not sure how healthy it is to a representative form of government where 300 million plus people think that they need to or should engage on every micro decision that is made. Because that's not the way representative government works. Representative government works when we elect a president and members of the House and members of the Senate to be our voice. If we don't like the job that they're doing, our voice is communicated in the ballot box with who we send there to do the things that we want them to do, but I think when we start having people take to the streets and pro- testing, that brings us down to the level of some other countries where there's no confidence and trust in the system of government anymore. I think it's a very tenuous place to be. If I had a message for the American peo- ple, it would be "Let's again start looking at the glass as half full." If you're the biggest na- tion, the most powerful nation on the planet, that means that your problems, your issues are IMPACT Interviews Walking to Capitol Hill.