Word: rayburnisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...would not do the Kennedy family's bidding. He declared that the vice presidency was a worthless job compared with being Senate leader, related the sad tenure of "Cactus Jack" Garner, who had called the office nothing more than a "pitcher of warm spit," and said Speaker Sam Rayburn had told him to stay far away from it. If he could not be President, he would stay in the Senate, Johnson had told me with such rage and finality -- his nose an inch from mine -- that I chalked...
...well. Bob Strauss is not one to dwell on his failures. As a consummate inside political trader, perhaps the last of the breed, he never lacks new challenges. His predecessors, all the great political bosses and power brokers of the past -- Daley, Meany, Rayburn, Johnson -- are gone now, their reputations eroded by the winds of calamity and reform. Yet if today's prefab candidates and queasy partisanship make some voters long for the old smoke- filled rooms, they can take heart: the legacy of the backstage impresarios lives on in Strauss...
...code collegians invariably follow when in the Capitol. It's immediately obvious when you are introduced to a fellow intern. In the interest of brevity, you don't ask names. You don't ask colleges. You don't even ask what they're doing this summer. You ask simply: "Rayburn, Hart, or Cannon...
...historical record abruptly changes in the early 1940s, when people began to rely on the telephone more than the mail. "Through Johnson's detailed correspondence with his patron Alvin Wirtz and others, you could trace the most intricate deals and such matters as his stormy relationship with Sam Rayburn," says Caro. "Then, at a crucial moment, just when you want to know what someone is thinking, you'll run into a telegram or note saying 'Phone me tonight.' That's when you feel the impact of the telephone right in your gut." In researching L.B.J.'s role in the passage...
Under the glare of television lights in the Rayburn Office Building, the dour former Marine described himself as a loyal public servant who became an architect of policies he did not always believe in. Yet time and again he defended the President while blaming himself for the questionable efforts to support the contras. "President Reagan's motives and direction to his subordinates throughout this enterprise has always been in keeping with the law and national values," McFarlane asserted. "I don't think he is at fault here, and if anybody...