Sen. Joe Manchin said it was important to have "faith" in the criminal justice system, even following the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island and the grand jury announcement an indictment wouldn't be brought against policeman Daniel Pantaleo, who used a chokehold in the incident.
"Basically you have to have faith in the system. You really have to. It's the greatest system on the Earth. And, the rule of law, basically, makes us different than any place else in the world," the West Virginia Democrat said Thursday on Fox & Friends.
Calling the death "horrific," Manchin stressed the importance that people were "tolerant" and police "well-trained," adding that oversight of such incidents should be left to local governments, rather than involve federal officials.
"Every locality is responsible. It's not going to be all governed out of Washington. I don't think the founding fathers ever, ever intended for this country to be run out of Washington on the day-to-day basis of minutiae," he said.
Policemen "should be your friend" who people looked to for protection, Manchin explained, adding that if there were problems, officials could examine "what's going right in other parts of the country."
Manchin also said he understood why people had gotten "fired up" about President Barack Obama's executive order on immigration, and that the president wasn't responding to what the voters were trying to say in the midterm elections. He said the president's actions gave "the appearance, the perception" that perhaps he wasn't listening to them.
"People, they need to know you feel their pain. They need to know that, basically, you know where they're coming from. You know how difficult their lives are, how concerned they are about education, how concerned they are about the changing of America, and is it for the best?" he said.
The United States can't be the "childcare center for the world" or the "law enforcement center for the world," but Americans could still show they cared, he said.
"What we can do is, basically, keep America strong, that we can help people out of compassion. And, if they don't feel that your leader has that compassion and doesn't come across compassionately, it's just another speech," he said.
Manchin, who has voiced frustration with the gridlock he encountered in Washington after taking office four years ago, said he left his position as his state's governor two years early because he hoped he could bring "some little bit of common sense from West Virginia." However, if gridlock continued, he said he would rethink running for re-election.
"If I can make a difference, and help bring the place to some type of workable order, I'm happy to do that. If not, and I see it's not going to do anything but same ol', same ol', the politics we've had in the past, then I'll make that decision," he said.
Manchin said he had "reached out to my friends and my colleagues on the Republican side," urging them to "get something done" when the GOP takes control of the Senate in January, adding he encouraged them not to "make the mistake that we made as Democrats."
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