Politics & Power Quote by Byron Dorgan

There is a practiced innocence in Byron Dorgan framing his political origin story as “proud of politics” rather than proud of winning, governing, or ideology. It’s a line that tries to rescue politics from its own reputation: not the grimy horse-trading the public imagines, but an honorable craft of collective decision-making. The phrase “the way we make decisions” shifts the focus from outcomes to process, a subtle defense of institutions at a time when Americans increasingly judge government by its failures and gridlock.

Dorgan’s intent reads like a preemptive rebuttal to cynicism: if you start from pride, disillusionment (his or ours) becomes a critique of deviation, not a confession of naïveté. The subtext is that something has gone wrong since he “came into” the system. That construction implies a before-and-after without naming villains. It’s a politician’s way of signaling disappointment while keeping the door open for reform. He can lament corrosive money, polarization, or media-driven outrage without alienating colleagues by specifying the culprit.

Context matters: Dorgan is a long-serving Democratic senator from North Dakota, a retail-politics state where civic participation and procedural legitimacy still carry cultural weight. This kind of language plays well with voters who want to believe government can be decent, even when they’re furious at it. It’s also strategically nostalgic. By invoking an earlier moment of pride, he invites the audience to share the loss and, crucially, to imagine recovery. The line doesn’t argue policy; it argues for faith in the mechanism that makes policy possible.