Political Quotes

“I just have heard so much, Mr. President, about a desire to return to less partisanship and more comity at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. I hope that might happen for the sake of this country. I go back to an experience my father used to tell me about when I was a child. It was in 1936. I was not yet alive. But my father was born, raised in Vermont. At that time it was probably the most Republican State in the Union, one of only two States, for example, that voted for Alf Landon in the Franklin Roosevelt landslide. President Franklin Roosevelt came to Vermont in 1936, actually August 1, 1936. He went in an open car down State Street in Montpelier. The National Life Insurance Building had its headquarters at that time there. My family had their home almost across the street where they had the Leahy Press. My father, who was probably the only Democrat in Montpelier at the time, was standing in front of the National Life Building. You must understand, National Life was sort of an adjunct to the Republican Party. They would determine, along with a couple other companies, who would be Governor this year to the next year and the next year at a time when we were solely a one-party State. I must say, as a Democrat I will have to admit they came up with some pretty good Governors too, but very, very much a Republican hierarchy place. As the car went by, the President of the National Life took off his hat, stood at attention holding it over his heart.…”