Everett Dirksen

I was there when Republicans and Democrats worked together.

When I was an assistant to Tom Kuechel, who was the minority whip under Everett Dirksen, Democrats and Republicans were working together on important legislation.

They thought it was important to do, to be able to cooperate.

and work on solving problems facing our country.

But Johnson was understandably bitter by now, and Johnson's, Johnson's, um, Johnson's notion-- And if you listen, you can find it on YouTube.

If you listen to Johnson's discussions with Senator Everett Dirksen from this time, it's really revealing.

Johnson's basically like, "Fuck you.

I'm gonna burn it down.

You could make deals in those days.

You need a, you need a dam, you need a public works project, and he brought the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen, along.

All sorts of deals they made with one another, and then finally he says to him, "You know, Everett, you come with me on this bill, 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names, Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen." [laughs] How could Dirksen resist? He brings the, the Republicans to join the northern Democrats.

They break the filibuster, and then finally Jim Crow is broken in the South.

It was a huge accomplishment, but it was a really courageous act to make that his number one priority.

People are piling in, unquote.

To paraphrase Senator Everett Dirksen's reputed observation, quote, a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money, unquote.

The money here is real.

The math, not so much.

You know, he first got elected in 68 saying that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam when what he had really done is he had just blown up the peace deal that LBJ and Hubert Humphrey had worked out with the Vietnamese.

He committed treason to do that, as Everett Dirksen pointed out.

And then, you know, his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.

And then he declared this war on drugs.

This is the chamber where Daniel Webster delivered his most stirring speeches.

This is where Henry Clay described the American system, where Everett Dirksen convinced his own Republican Party to vote for the Civil Rights Act.

And now we have a senator who not only can't get his basic facts straight, but would s- probably struggle to read the lines written for a zombie in Night of the Living Dead.

[laughs]

There's a bunch of them.

As Everett Dirksen was wont to say back in the old Ben Colder, at least, parody of great men do repeat themselves, Everett Dirksen, and that's a bunch of them.

There's a bunch of them.

And there was also, speaking of baseball, A farewell weekend for Rick Riz, Mariner Hall of Famer, 41 years as a voice of the Mariners, and really got to experience what not everybody in the profession gets to.