Exasperated

with the state of current affairs, I picked up a biography of
Sam Rayburn. Mr. Sam ran for Congress in 1911
as a Democrat, his platform included a federal inheritance tax,
direct election of senators, abolition of the electoral college,
and opposition to initiative and referendum. Not bad…..
Author Donald Bacon says, “Rayburn postponed hard decisions as long as possible;
most problems, he believed, disappeared in time. Open conflict was his last resort. He had learned that once an angry battle is joined, scars and bitterness inevitably remained whether you win or lose. He believed every public official had a responsibility “to be fair, to be just, to be reasonable.”
A few quotes:
“We were always so poor at home and everybody worked like the devil,
that's what made me determined to try to help the average man get a break.”
“A man ought to live in the very best house that he can afford,
if a man doesn’t get his chief pleasure in life after he goes home and closes the door behind him, he doesn’t get much pleasure.”
“Now I don’t hate anybody, but there are a few shitasses that I loathe.”
Rayburn was an effective legislator for over fifty years and was, by all accounts, incorruptible. Needless to say, nobody ever took him golfing at St. Andrews.