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"  The twentieth in a daily series \u2014 Esquire&amp;#039;s historic collection of wisdom from members of the 111th Congress... One of my kids told me, &amp;quot;Mom, you don&amp;#039;t have power if you don&amp;#039;t use it.&amp;quot; Power is the ability to persuade something to happen. The women before me were really the rabble-rousers, which let those of us coming up in the seventies take what they&amp;#039;d created and mold it whichever way was going to be good for us. I have a daughter who&amp;#039;s 24. I don&amp;#039;t even think that gender differences exist in the eyes of her generation. Career counseling teaches you how to listen. That&amp;#039;s been very useful. Most of the people you meet in the House don&amp;#039;t listen well. They talk all the time. Being a good listener is more than just being quiet. It&amp;#039;s reflecting back on what you&amp;#039;re hearing. It&amp;#039;s processing the information to formulate a question, a comment or a speech. In Washington, I don&amp;#039;t think we anticipate enough into the future to be sure that revenues are going to meet demand. It&amp;#039;s mostly just fly by the seat of your pants. Or create indebtedness and hope that somebody else can fix the problem. The economic hole we&amp;#039;re in is a legitimate worry, and I&amp;#039;m not sure if anybody really knows the way out. So you have to look at certain historical data, try to predict the future, and use your best thinking to try to find the way.  People let their guard down a little more when they&amp;#039;re eating. When I was first elected, my youngest child was in middle school and it was a lot of not being there. That was the same thing that was going on when I was growing up and my father was a floor member. Whenever a member of the House is ruing the fact that they&amp;#039;re not there with their children, I tell them it&amp;#039;s not so much how long you&amp;#039;re there with your children, it&amp;#039;s what you do in the time that you are. Just make it count! That&amp;#039;s what my dad always did.  No matter what your decisions are, no matter what your votes are, if you&amp;#039;re not playing by the rules you&amp;#039;re taking a big risk. It was meant to be a contemplative government. The checks and balances built into our Constitution are an amazing thing. For instance, before 2009, we had a Republican House and a Republican president, but we couldn&amp;#039;t get anything through the Senate. We&amp;#039;d be saying, &amp;quot;Gosh darn, that Senate! They just won&amp;#039;t do anything!&amp;quot; Now it&amp;#039;s a different day. We have a Democratic president and a Democratic House. Only now, as a Republican, I&amp;#039;m saying, &amp;quot;Yeah, that Senate&amp;#039;s great! It won&amp;#039;t pass anything!&amp;quot;  Quite honestly, I think being a woman is an advantage because I think we&amp;#039;re more forthright, more forthcoming, more honest in our responses and more attuned to what families are thinking about. Just in talking to you, I&amp;#039;ve probably mentioned my children four times. Abraham Lincoln. I&amp;#039;d probably serve him fried chicken because he&amp;#039;s from Kentucky. I hate raising money. It diverts you from what your real task is: to be a representative. You&amp;#039;re diverted into preservation when you really want to spend your time and energy making a better state and a better country \u2014 which is the reason you ran in the first place. We&amp;#039;re all kissing babies. I don&amp;#039;t think that will ever go.  CLICK FOR MORE ESSENTIAL WISDOM FROM THE (CURRENT) CONGRESS &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8811/shelley-moore-capito-interview-1110/>