Richard Brevard Russell

Here’s one credible way of politics, lots to learn from and perhaps works in the idealistic South:

1. Decisions are not made during open forums, but behind them. Russell knows how to strike compromises, by achieving goals of opponents. He gives away credit freely. Russell also seeds ideas and let others believe they were their own.
2. Russell studied, learnt and understood. He knew procedure better anyone else. He read all the bills, like Bob Moses or Al Smith. More often he has thought about someone else’s problem more in depth than themselves. First you understand their goals, and then you understand how to achieve their goals better than they. Then you have power.
3. Russell is also honest and not a perceived “politician”. When it is easy to go with the crowd and say not what you mean, doing the opposite builds credibility.

Like LaGuardia, like Moses, the true politician north or south is not starry eyed. No matter what the inside views of Russell are on race, he dissembles and finds common ground. Whenever one makes the southern cause a race issue, he will fall; whenever one makes that one of federal versus state rights, he can united the midwestern swing states. Politics is pragmatism, politics is the art of man, politics is the way and only way of getting things done.