A Slate To Revive The Senate
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 4th, 2008 4:35 am by HL
A Slate To Revive The Senate
WASHINGTON — Senators are great glad-handers, not just with their constituents but with each other. Every time a vote is called, they mill around in front of the rostrum, grabbing hands and shoulders, or patting each other’s back. But, as my colleague Dana Milbank noted, it was a poignant moment last week when Ted Stevens of Alaska, newly indicted for accepting unreported favors from an oilman friend, walked over to Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who uses a wheelchair because of age and illness, in search of support and consolation.
Nixon’s Mastery of Change Explains His Durability
YORBA LINDA, Calif. — The house was built from a kit, like so many in that time and in this place, and Frank Nixon, who was handy and ambitious, added a fireplace to the plan. There was a piano in the parlor — Frank’s son would tickle the keys as a child and later into adulthood — and all around the house stood lemon and orange trees, watered from the Santa Ana River. These were humble enough beginnings — most of our Republican presidents, apart from Theodore Roosevelt and the Bushes, grew up in circumstances like these — and, whether in the White House or at the summit in Moscow or Peking, Richard Nixon would not forget that his roots were in citrus country, and in a hardscrabble part of the country he would spend a lifetime striving to lead.
