Monday, January 22, 2018

The Wisdom of Sam Rayburn

In The Best and The Brightest, David Halberstam recounted a story about a conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn regarding the qualifications of the Kennedy cabinet:

Stunned by their glamour and intellect, [LBJ] had rushed back to tell Rayburn, his great and crafty mentor, about them, about how brilliant each was, that fellow Bundy from Harvard, Rusk from Rockefeller, McNamara from Ford. On he went, naming them all. "Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say," said Rayburn, "but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once."


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