Reaction Paper to given quotes listed - Essay Example

Ive always said that in politics, your enemies cant hurt you, but your friends will kill you. Ann Richards Number SubmissionNumber of Words: 530 In Texas, government officials are more dominated by the Republicans who strongly believe that the wages should be based on a free market and that taxes collected from people should be equal regardless of their socio-economic status etc. Since 2009, Republican supporters including the Texians continuously vote for Senator John Cornyn for his third term (Open Congress, 2011).

Back in July 2011, Senator Cornyn delivered his argumentative speech against President Obama’s job performance concerning how he handles the U.S. debt crisis. Senator Cornyn was against increasing the people’s taxes given that the unemployment rate has already reached 9.1%. Instead of increasing taxes, Senator Cornyn strongly suggests to carefully look through the government spending which is as high as 25% of taxes as compared to 18% of tax revenues (Cornyn, 2011). President Obama is a Democrat whereas Senator Cornyn is a Republican.

In Senator Cornyn’s speech, he mentioned that “President Obama’s re-election speech was abosultely disgraceful” and that “the president is criticizing the work performances of other people without even doing his own job by proposing a responsible solution to our nation’s debt” (Cornyn, 2011). Upon analyzing the situation, Senator Cornyn was not really out there to destroy the well-being of President Obama. He was simply commenting on what he think is best in terms of coming up with effective solutions that could improve the socio-economic status and quality of life of the American people.

In fact, Senator Cornyn’s criticism was based his perception about President Obama’s re-election speech. It was not something that he made up to destroy the reputation of Obama as the president of the United States. As a common knowledge, each politician has their own strategic way on how they could protect their professional standing. However, it is a wrong perception for people to think that becoming a part of the Texas government politics could severely hurt us as a person. Given that each politician has their own personal views on how they can contribute in the development of the U.S. economy, it is but a common thing for them to criticize the works of other politicians so they can convince the people to support their political strategies than those of others.

Ann Richards was the first woman elected as the State Treasurer in Texas back in 1982. Because of the extensive experiences in the field of politics that Richards gained over the years, she quoted that “I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you”. The quote of Richards is very much similar to the quote of Conant (1903: 288) stating that “save me from my friends; I can handle my enemies”. Despite the continuous competition that is taking place amongst the U.S. government officials, most of these criticisms are not focused on destroying who we are but to motivate and encourage the politicians to make wiser and better political decisions.

Considering the fact that it is our friends who know us more than anyone else in this world, it becomes more obvious that our friends are the ones who could make use of our darkest secrets to hurt us deeply more than what our enemies can do.*** End ***ReferencesConant, W. (1903). Salvation. Vol. 5. Wm. Cowper Conant.Cornyn, J. (2011, July 1). Retrieved September 9, 2011, from Watch Senator Cornyns response to the Presidents absolutely disgraceful speech: http://www.johncornyn.com/Open Congress. (2011). Retrieved September 9, 2011, from Senator John Cornyn.

Republican • Texas • 3rd Term • Sworn In 2002: http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300027_John_Cornyn