Sublime

Eisenhower not only admired Clay’s success in the business world but considered him a walking encyclopedia of American politics.

During the court fight over the contested election, Rauh recalls, “Corcoran called to get me on the defense team and said, ‘This wonderful congressman …’ In [Abe] Fortas’ office these people were talking about what a great man we were defending. I just sort of automatically assumed it.… But it soon became clear that Johnson was not the shining knig

There is another story of Marshall sitting for one of the many official portraits that was required of him. After appearing many times and patiently honoring the requests, Marshall was finally informed by the painter that he was finished and free to go. Marshall stood up and began to leave. “Don’t you want to see the painting?” the artist asked. “N

In June 1789 some congressmen wanted Washington to have to gain senatorial approval to fire as well as hire executive officers—the Constitution was silent on the subject; the House duly approved that crippling encroachment on executive authority. When the Senate vote ended in a tie, Vice President Adams cast the deciding vote to defeat the measure,

If Eisenhower had been skeptical of the holding in Brown, he could easily have appointed southerners who might have challenged the decision. But he did not. Harlan, Brennan, Whittaker, and Stewart supported the holding in Brown that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, and became part of the continuing unanimity of the Warren Court on racial

One, hammered home in his consciousness by the results of his accommodation with G. Wilbur Doughty, was that the simplest method of accomplishing his aims was to use the power he possessed in all its manifestations, even those that as recently as a year previously he had shrunk from using.

Lyndon Johnson’s appointment had allowed him to bring together, in a single office, the men he had scattered through the federal bureaucracy.

Jefferson extolled Washington as “the best horseman of his age and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback,” an appraisal echoed by many others.17

AND FOR MANY YEARS the Senate made use of its great powers. It created much of the federal Judiciary—the Constitution established only the Supreme Court; it was left to Congress to “constitute tribunals inferior,” and it was a three-man Senate committee that wrote the Judiciary Act of 1789, an Act that has been called “almost an appendage to the Co