Political Quotes

“2 weeks ago I came to this floor and spoke of an event that happened in the late 1930's in Montpelier, VT, the capital of Vermont, the city where I was born. I will recount that only briefly because we have the state of the Union message tonight. I hope it may be instructive to some. In the late 1930's, then-President Franklin Roosevelt visited Vermont. To put this in context, during the Roosevelt landslide, President Roosevelt carried all States but two: the State of Maine and the State of Vermont. We were not a hotbed of Democratic action, Vermont. The president of the National Life Insurance Co. of Vermont was standing on State Street. That building was directly across the street from where my family lived. He was standing next to my father, who was probably the lone Democrat in Montpelier. President Roosevelt's car went by, and the president of National Life, an ardent, lifelong, fervent, and proud Republican, stood at attention, took his hat off, and held it over his heart as a mark of respect, as did other men on the street. My father, who knew him well, chided him a little bit and said, ``I never thought I'd see the day you would salute Franklin Roosevelt.'' He turned to my father and said, ``Howard, I didn't salute Franklin Roosevelt. I saluted the President of the United States.''”