Your job in running the government is to run it and run it effectively and efficiently and all the people down here, from the president to the leadership in Congress who engaged in this stuff failed, by definition. Why are people more appreciative of what’s going on in the states? Because we’re doing our jobs.

We made the concerted effort from the time I got into office … we started working with those groups and getting them a serious seat at the table, knowing they weren’t always going to agree with my policies, but that they were going to be listened to.

What we have in Washington now are absolutists. [...] The better you do, the more voters you attract, the more diverse voters you attract, the more suspect you are? Well there’s a winning formula. I’m going to be me. And if I ever decide to run for anything again, if being me isn’t enough, then fine. I’ll go home. This isn’t my whole life.

[Republicans] just did not have an endgame to a strategy. Since Obamacare is still currently being funded and the government is re-opened, maybe I’m too simple, but it appears to me that the strategy of de-funding it by closing the government failed.