Word: rayburnisms
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...developed a remarkable system of self-government, comprised of hard rules and of a hard breed of men who, however else they may differ, live by their rules. The five top leaders of the House have only one thing in common. They can all say with Speaker Sam Rayburn: "I love this House. It is my life." Through the Big Five, both in their personalities and their positions, the House can best be understood...
TEXAS' SAM RAYBURN, 77, the 44th Speaker of the House, has held his office 14 years, far longer than any other man (Henry Clay, elected Speaker his first day, served ten years). Eighth of eleven children of a Confederate cavalryman, Rayburn comes from tough, Bible-reading ("Every bit of wisdom is written somewhere in that book") people, who scratched a living from 40 sun-baked acres of cotton at Bonham, Texas. Folks such as his family, he thinks, are the "real people," and his feeling for them forms the basis of his political liberalism. Since 1913 Rayburn has represented Texas...
Congressional District, whose seven counties cover 4,827 sq. mi. from the Red River to Dallas County. Publicly grumpy, egg-bald Sam Rayburn in private is gentle and old-school courteous, presides over the House, at $45,000 per year, with a strange and astute mixture of paternalism and institutionalism. Sam Rayburn has made the House his home, its members his family...
MASSACHUSETTS' JOHN MCCORMACK, 67, was elected Democratic floor leader the same month -September, 1940 -that Mister Sam became Speaker (during the two Republican Congresses since then, Rayburn became floor leader, McCormack Democratic whip). Boston-born John McCormack, a cigar-munching teetotaler, was left fatherless at 13, shined shoes, ran errands, earned his way through night law school, was elected to the House in 1928. He is a hard-knuckled politician from one of the hardest knuckled of all political schools: Massachusetts' Twelfth Congressional District. More than half Irish, the Twelfth takes in ten dingy, crowded...
...public housing than any other U.S. congressional district. Childless, devoted to his wife Harriet (he can boast that in 39 years of marriage they have never missed dinner together, whether at public banquet or in fireside privacy), McCormack too is, in effect, wedded to the House. Heir apparent to Rayburn, leader of the New England Democratic bloc, grey, sharp-featured John McCormack is, in his own words, his party's "field general." His battlefield is the House floor, his weapon one of the House's toughest and most partisan tongues. "I'm a great believer in the two-party system...