And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country” that they summoned up, and, in some way… - Robert A. Caro

Until he had run for Governor three years before, W. (for Wilbert) Lee O’Daniel had never had the slightest connection with politics — not as a candidate, not as a campaign worker, not even as a voter; he had never cast a ballot. He was a flour salesman and a radio announcer. He had turned to radio — in 1927 — to sell more flour. At the time, newly arrived in Texas, he was the thirty-seven-year-old sales manager for a Fort Worth company that manufactured Light Crust Flour. An unemployed country-and-western band asked him to sponsor it on a local radio station. The Light Crust Doughboys were not notably successful until one day the regular announcer was unable to appear, and O’Daniel substituted for him; finding that he liked the job, he decided to keep it.

strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies” — a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy “when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching.

If you can’t come into a room and tell right away who is for you and who is against you, you have no business in politics.