"The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as "seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand. - Robert A. Caro

There is a time to fish and a time to mend nets.

The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a “oneness found nowhere else in politics.” The symbol was the legendary “Southern Caucus,” the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened — meetings that were, White said, “for all the world like reunions of a large and highly individualistic family whose members are nevertheless bound by one bond.” In those meetings, the southern position was agreed upon, its tactics mapped, its front made solid.

Congress has a deep, vested interest in its own inefficiency.