Word: rayburns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...House was haunted. McCormack evoked the spirit in the opening words of his acceptance speech: "Speaker Rayburn was not only a great man. He was a good man." For all of McCormack's days as Speaker, he will be pursued by the memory of his predecessor and dear friend, the little Texan who had presided over the House more than twice as long as any other man. The House had rarely given a Speaker such wholehearted trust and respect...
There was no Democratic challenge to Majority Leader McCormack's more or less automatic succession to Rayburn's chair-nor was there any marked enthusiasm about it. Some liberal columnists and editorial writers grumbled, but the young liberals of the House, much closer in "style" to their President than to their new Speaker, were too prudent to voice their misgivings publicly...
...leaders. In the evenings, with his wife in their hotel suite, McCormack snips dozens of useful items from the newspapers and furiously pens helpful memoranda in an often undecipherable scribble, then dispatches them to his colleagues the next day. One of McCormack's first acts after Sam Rayburn's death was to offer to help get Rayburn's staff new jobs. For years, Congressmen of both parties, eager to deliver speeches but frustrated because they could not get recognition from the Chair, knew they could come to McCormack with their problem. His invariable answer: "You just...
Albert's style of leadership is low-pressure. He deplores the sort of backroom bloodletting that has sometimes spattered the records of quick-drawing majority leaders of the past. He approves the Rayburn technique of giving members a loose rein when it comes to difficult votes. "If you whip them into line every time," he says, "by the session's third vote you're through. If you can't win them by persuasion you can't win them at all." On the other hand, Albert is tough enough to demand votes when the outcome...
...heart attack; in Washington. A party wheelhorse in Indiana and Stevenson backer before taking the national chairmanship over Harry Truman's bitter opposition, he provoked Southern Democrats with open criticism of their civil rights stand, attacked Lyndon Johnson and the late Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn for "moving too slowly toward a positive legislative program," had his last good scrap in 1960 when Truman accused him of trying to rig the Democratic Convention for Kennedy...