Maury Maverick was a member of the Texas delegation in the 74th and 75th Congresses, 1935-39; he was Mayor of San Antonio for the two years following that; then a director of the War Production Board, 1941-43; then head of the Small War Plants Corporation, 1943-47. He is the author of In Blood and Ink and A Maverick American. Discussing Maverick's right to advise new congressmen, Charles A. Henderson, of the Atwater Kent Foundation, formerly a special assistant in the WPB, said: "I have known Maury twenty years and doubt that any man in America is better qualified to advise new congressmen. Stentorian of voice, subtle as a brass band, courageous, sincere and frank, he has haunted phonies and fence-straddlers throughout his public career. Those who don't like him certainly respect his patriotism, guts and brilliance. Smart Washington newcomers will listen to him."
DEAR NEW REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS:
All of a sudden you are an IMPORTANT PERSON. So start with this: Accept and understand your grave responsibility. Take it seriously—but keep your sense of humor. DON'T TAKE A BACK SEAT.
Remember—Washington is filled with good people with brains: Some other people are clever and smart, too, and will try to slow you down.
Do Your Job
Here are some essential things to do.
1. Learn the floor and debate rules. Get three "Jefferson's Manuals" (Rules of House). Also get the Senate Rules. One for your office, one for home (demand they be tabbed) and a little one for your back pocket. Organize classes. Learn those rules, learn how to get up and speak for five minutes. Worlds have been moved in those five minutes.
2. Meet the doorkeepers, various committee clerks, the sergeant at arms. They are efficient, all good people and helpful. These people won't double-cross you, irrespective of party.
3. In your first speech, wait thirty minutes, then go ask for it from the reporter. Or have it sent to your office. Correct it. Put subheads in it, so it will be read. Get shorter sentences. Make shorter paragraphs. Get white space. Ask also for print proof if you want it, which will be sent to your home that night. Get a Government Printing Office style manual.
4. Go over to the Library of Congress. It has the most beautiful interior in the world. Also, the greatest and richest treasury of knowledge. Work those people to death. They like it. They will do research for you over the phone, and deliver books to you, marked right where you want them.
5. Get a map of D. C. and around. Drive your own car in other sections than the Northwest. Drive through the Negro and white slums.
6. On Sundays, shut off your phone—or better, go sightseeing: to Mount Vernon, Monticello, Gettysburg, Baltimore. In town, see St. Gaudens' "Grief" at Rock Creek Cemetery; the Lincoln Monument; the Washington National Cathedral (Wilson's Tomb); the Franciscans' Catacombs; the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (at the National Catholic University). Above all, see the museums, the Capitol itself, the art galleries, Folger's Library (Shakespeare), and go walking at Haines Point by the Potomac.
Week days: Go at midnight to the GPO, the greatest and most spectacular printing office on earth. Visit the Bureau of Engraving, the Pure Food and Drug Division Laboratory, and the Agricultural Experiment Station at Beltsville.
7. Get the White House to have two congressional meetings at the White House, very soon and after supper. First for all new congressmen. Another for new Democratic congressmen only, with Rayburn, McCormack and Forand. Do not draft the President to play the piano—let him play, if he volunteers. But ask him to talk informally. Ask him what he wants done. Do not be talked out of these meetings.
Some More Rules
No catchwords. The worst sin a congressman can commit is to solve his own inhibitions or fears by adopting catchwords. Catchwords are used by people who are afraid to make solutions, or to make excuses, or to intimidate the other fellow.
The word is recuse. Sure—observe party discipline. (Sam Rayburn is a fine man: tell him your troubles), but watch that seniority system, the party caucus and the Rules Committee. Go along with the party when you can, fight inside for progress. If you go to a caucus, and they try to hogtie you on something too strong to gulp down, recuse yourself. When the caucus is over, just walk up, and sign a slip. "I recuse"; you have that right. To recuse is to refuse to follow, to reject, except to, to challenge; it's there for your protection.
They will beat you over the head with the stuffed clubs of polite extremes. Also impolite extremes, if they think they can scare you. For instance, if you want to enforce the Anti-Trust Act, as you should, you will be told you are ruining business. The Bigs will get the Littles to wire you. And it is certain that your hometown paper will attack you, for almost everything, except for getting the New Post Office. (You will be called a STATESMAN when you fill the pork barrel.) But remember, when the papers and the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM bite you, they were not for you in the first place.
Don't seek a bad press, but don't be afraid, and don't give in. Be friendly with newspapers and reporters, even the Chicago Tribune, but don't let them chouse you around.
Stand for Something
Health. Vote for the National Health Bill and for national health insurance, in spite of hell, high water and the windy Dr. Fishbein. The docs will spend $10 million to flood you down with the biggest, meanest and dirtiest lobby fight ever put on Congress. The old family physician who brought you into this melancholy globe will weep over you and look at you pained-like. The County Medical Society will send you smug, threatening and insinuating resolutions. Tell them all to go to hell.
Housing. The housing will cost little in appropriations. Vote it; the money will come back, EVERY CENT, as it has in the HOLC, the FHA and the low-cost projects. All that was a good investment for business and the banks. NOT ONE THIN DIME HAS BEEN LOST BY THE GOVERNMENT ON HOUSING.
Controls. Controls are inevitable or we Chinafy ourselves. The condition of inflation is much worse than when you were elected. Much stronger measures are needed now.
Unload those generals. They never got beat in an election, or were lied about, or persecuted, or humiliated, like Lincoln, two Roosevelts, Jackson, Jefferson, and you. Blow that dusty House and Senate bugle for assembly back to the barracks. Generals have no understanding of civil life, human forces. They have absolutely no business in civil posts.
Beat communism with progress. What secures peace? Armies? Treaties? Denunciation of communism and Russia? No; it's a matter of groceries; global economics. Fight for world trade, for the industrialization of the world. Money by billions, and arms, for corruption will never save this world. No country appreciates being given that kind of money.
Representative, Senator, listen: In the long run, no nation is going to control this human race. Not us, not Russia. Not the British Empire. Human beings are human beings the world over. We are not going to be able to sit in complacency or fear; we can't even control Santo Domingo.
Congress and the world have got to stop babbling symbols. When people eat and work, they do not fight.
Don't be a committee slave.
Now remember, you are going into a hard life, but with a chance to fill your own soul with glory.
They will tell you not to rock the boat (Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln did). You will be stashed out on a committee like a Dutch tulip bulb in the dark with little pebbles around you. You are supposed to stay quiet in that darkness for many springs, and when you emerge to blossom, you may be droopy and blind, too old to see or too tired to want to. You will be unctuously told that if you work hard, keep your mouth shut, "do your committee work" and answer letters—that is to say, if you are a grinning, hand-shaking dummy—you will be reelected continuously and some day be a committee chairman and even wear striped pants, in which you would not dare show up at home. Yes, you will be a chairman and, by then, a dodo, an intellectually dead keewee. You will get a pension all right, and when you die you will be promptly forgotten.
This is true: The people of the United States voted against Wall Street and the Communists. But don't be led off the track by somebody feeding you labels of any kind. Certain old-timers and young demagogues will rise to prove everything new or corrective is communism. The C of C, the NAM, 86 percent of the newspapers, will oppose everything. And because of the recent punkin drammer, they will try to divert you and make a punkin chaser out of you instead of a progressive, fighting legislator. Old-time American liberalism and progressivism is not communism—it is just the opposite: never forget that.
For a quarter-century, I have seen young handsome men, full of ideals, spring into Washington. I have seen many slink away, heavy of soul, fat of head, lazy, sick, stupid, traitors to the people who sent them there. I have seen others stay to lobby for the special interests whom they originally fought against in Congress and which they now serve like dull, political eunuchs in the harem of a pasha.
The pressure on you to follow in their footsteps will be great.
Everything you do that is new or that inconveniences anybody will bring self-righteous criticism, pious warnings. Often when you act as a true statesman you will be ridiculed and thought a fool. Many times they will try to work through your wife and kids, holding out the bribe of better clothes, a better home, better schools, protection against the unending sense of insecurity for your family that will haunt you. But don't give in. Do what you think is right.
You face what Joseph Conrad tried to write about, that is, being alone. But if you can feel and see beyond the fake forest built around you by newspapers, selfish people and special interests, the world is with you. Not to be dramatic, but two billion frightened and suffering people are depending on you, and their hearts are beating with you. Stay with them.
DEAR NEW REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS:
All of a sudden you are an IMPORTANT PERSON. So start with this: Accept and understand your grave responsibility. Take it seriously—but keep your sense of humor. DON'T TAKE A BACK SEAT.
Remember—Washington is filled with good people with brains: Some other people are clever and smart, too, and will try to slow you down.
Do Your Job
Here are some essential things to do.
1. Learn the floor and debate rules. Get three "Jefferson's Manuals" (Rules of House). Also get the Senate Rules. One for your office, one for home (demand they be tabbed) and a little one for your back pocket. Organize classes. Learn those rules, learn how to get up and speak for five minutes. Worlds have been moved in those five minutes.
2. Meet the doorkeepers, various committee clerks, the sergeant at arms. They are efficient, all good people and helpful. These people won't double-cross you, irrespective of party.
3. In your first speech, wait thirty minutes, then go ask for it from the reporter. Or have it sent to your office. Correct it. Put subheads in it, so it will be read. Get shorter sentences. Make shorter paragraphs. Get white space. Ask also for print proof if you want it, which will be sent to your home that night. Get a Government Printing Office style manual.
4. Go over to the Library of Congress. It has the most beautiful interior in the world. Also, the greatest and richest treasury of knowledge. Work those people to death. They like it. They will do research for you over the phone, and deliver books to you, marked right where you want them.
5. Get a map of D. C. and around. Drive your own car in other sections than the Northwest. Drive through the Negro and white slums.
6. On Sundays, shut off your phone—or better, go sightseeing: to Mount Vernon, Monticello, Gettysburg, Baltimore. In town, see St. Gaudens' "Grief" at Rock Creek Cemetery; the Lincoln Monument; the Washington National Cathedral (Wilson's Tomb); the Franciscans' Catacombs; the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (at the National Catholic University). Above all, see the museums, the Capitol itself, the art galleries, Folger's Library (Shakespeare), and go walking at Haines Point by the Potomac.
Week days: Go at midnight to the GPO, the greatest and most spectacular printing office on earth. Visit the Bureau of Engraving, the Pure Food and Drug Division Laboratory, and the Agricultural Experiment Station at Beltsville.
7. Get the White House to have two congressional meetings at the White House, very soon and after supper. First for all new congressmen. Another for new Democratic congressmen only, with Rayburn, McCormack and Forand. Do not draft the President to play the piano—let him play, if he volunteers. But ask him to talk informally. Ask him what he wants done. Do not be talked out of these meetings.
Some More Rules
No catchwords. The worst sin a congressman can commit is to solve his own inhibitions or fears by adopting catchwords. Catchwords are used by people who are afraid to make solutions, or to make excuses, or to intimidate the other fellow.
The word is recuse. Sure—observe party discipline. (Sam Rayburn is a fine man: tell him your troubles), but watch that seniority system, the party caucus and the Rules Committee. Go along with the party when you can, fight inside for progress. If you go to a caucus, and they try to hogtie you on something too strong to gulp down, recuse yourself. When the caucus is over, just walk up, and sign a slip. "I recuse"; you have that right. To recuse is to refuse to follow, to reject, except to, to challenge; it's there for your protection.
They will beat you over the head with the stuffed clubs of polite extremes. Also impolite extremes, if they think they can scare you. For instance, if you want to enforce the Anti-Trust Act, as you should, you will be told you are ruining business. The Bigs will get the Littles to wire you. And it is certain that your hometown paper will attack you, for almost everything, except for getting the New Post Office. (You will be called a STATESMAN when you fill the pork barrel.) But remember, when the papers and the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM bite you, they were not for you in the first place.
Don't seek a bad press, but don't be afraid, and don't give in. Be friendly with newspapers and reporters, even the Chicago Tribune, but don't let them chouse you around.
Stand for Something
Health. Vote for the National Health Bill and for national health insurance, in spite of hell, high water and the windy Dr. Fishbein. The docs will spend $10 million to flood you down with the biggest, meanest and dirtiest lobby fight ever put on Congress. The old family physician who brought you into this melancholy globe will weep over you and look at you pained-like. The County Medical Society will send you smug, threatening and insinuating resolutions. Tell them all to go to hell.
Housing. The housing will cost little in appropriations. Vote it; the money will come back, EVERY CENT, as it has in the HOLC, the FHA and the low-cost projects. All that was a good investment for business and the banks. NOT ONE THIN DIME HAS BEEN LOST BY THE GOVERNMENT ON HOUSING.
Controls. Controls are inevitable or we Chinafy ourselves. The condition of inflation is much worse than when you were elected. Much stronger measures are needed now.
Unload those generals. They never got beat in an election, or were lied about, or persecuted, or humiliated, like Lincoln, two Roosevelts, Jackson, Jefferson, and you. Blow that dusty House and Senate bugle for assembly back to the barracks. Generals have no understanding of civil life, human forces. They have absolutely no business in civil posts.
Beat communism with progress. What secures peace? Armies? Treaties? Denunciation of communism and Russia? No; it's a matter of groceries; global economics. Fight for world trade, for the industrialization of the world. Money by billions, and arms, for corruption will never save this world. No country appreciates being given that kind of money.
Representative, Senator, listen: In the long run, no nation is going to control this human race. Not us, not Russia. Not the British Empire. Human beings are human beings the world over. We are not going to be able to sit in complacency or fear; we can't even control Santo Domingo.
Congress and the world have got to stop babbling symbols. When people eat and work, they do not fight.
Don't be a committee slave.
Now remember, you are going into a hard life, but with a chance to fill your own soul with glory.
They will tell you not to rock the boat (Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln did). You will be stashed out on a committee like a Dutch tulip bulb in the dark with little pebbles around you. You are supposed to stay quiet in that darkness for many springs, and when you emerge to blossom, you may be droopy and blind, too old to see or too tired to want to. You will be unctuously told that if you work hard, keep your mouth shut, "do your committee work" and answer letters—that is to say, if you are a grinning, hand-shaking dummy—you will be reelected continuously and some day be a committee chairman and even wear striped pants, in which you would not dare show up at home. Yes, you will be a chairman and, by then, a dodo, an intellectually dead keewee. You will get a pension all right, and when you die you will be promptly forgotten.
This is true: The people of the United States voted against Wall Street and the Communists. But don't be led off the track by somebody feeding you labels of any kind. Certain old-timers and young demagogues will rise to prove everything new or corrective is communism. The C of C, the NAM, 86 percent of the newspapers, will oppose everything. And because of the recent punkin drammer, they will try to divert you and make a punkin chaser out of you instead of a progressive, fighting legislator. Old-time American liberalism and progressivism is not communism—it is just the opposite: never forget that.
For a quarter-century, I have seen young handsome men, full of ideals, spring into Washington. I have seen many slink away, heavy of soul, fat of head, lazy, sick, stupid, traitors to the people who sent them there. I have seen others stay to lobby for the special interests whom they originally fought against in Congress and which they now serve like dull, political eunuchs in the harem of a pasha.
The pressure on you to follow in their footsteps will be great.
Everything you do that is new or that inconveniences anybody will bring self-righteous criticism, pious warnings. Often when you act as a true statesman you will be ridiculed and thought a fool. Many times they will try to work through your wife and kids, holding out the bribe of better clothes, a better home, better schools, protection against the unending sense of insecurity for your family that will haunt you. But don't give in. Do what you think is right.
You face what Joseph Conrad tried to write about, that is, being alone. But if you can feel and see beyond the fake forest built around you by newspapers, selfish people and special interests, the world is with you. Not to be dramatic, but two billion frightened and suffering people are depending on you, and their hearts are beating with you. Stay with them.
Maury Maverick, The New Republic, January 17, 1949
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