Richard Jernigan -> RE: Aww...Shucks!.. (Apr. 28 2011 5:41:18)
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ORIGINAL: Estevan Huffman??! [:D] Everybody addressed him as "Mr. Baines," even his wife, in public. His son, Huffman Baines, Jr. was called "Huff." It's an old Southern custom to give the surnames of ancestors to children as first names. Both were men of the highest reputation for probity and integrity. Lyndon admired his uncle, who owned a small local telephone company, but he adored his aunt, Mrs. Baines. One Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Baines were among my parents' guests for Sunday dinner. In Texas, Sunday dinner starts about one PM, after church lets out and the guests have time to assemble. The conversation turned to Lyndon. "You may not know," Mr. Baines said, "that when Lyndon was making up his mind to run for President on his own, a group of us from here in Texas went up to the White House to try to talk him out of it." "Why was that, Mr. Baines?" my mother asked. "Not to put too fine a point on it, he lied too much," replied Mr. Baines. Judge John Onion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals took up the inquiry. "But Mr. Baines, isn't a politician at times practically obliged to color the truth a little?" "Some people may think so. But Lyndon lies because he enjoys it." When Richard Nixon told the nation, "I am not a crook," George Christian was already scheduled to give a speech the next evening at the Headliners' Club, the press club of the Texas capital. George was a man of the highest moral standards, a member of the vestry of our parish. I knew him pretty well. He was a warm and friendly man. He had been Johnson's Press Secretary, but like the rest of them, he resigned. In his speech, reported in newspapers throughout the nation, Christian alluded to the Nixon crisis, then segued into reminiscences of Johnson, whose creative speaking talents were well known. "Lyndon would hold a press conference in the morning, and announce a sweeping new major program. Then we would have to spend all afternoon and the next day running around trying to put together some kind of story to back him up." The assembled journalists were left to draw their own conclusions about Presidential truthfulness, past and present. For a few years Joe Kilgore's son worked for me as an engineer. Joe, senior was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas for decades, so he accumulated a certain amount of political power. When Pat Roberts, the TV preacher, announced that God had called him to run for President, Joe was interviewed on national TV. "Congressman Kilgore, in your experience, has God ever intervened directly in American politics before now?" "Why yes, I know of one instance." "When was that, sir?" "When Lyndon Johnson called me up on the telephone and told me not to run against Ralph Yarbrough in the Democrat primary election for the U.S. Senate." RNJ
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