Hit & Run > Real Men Know That Shoes Are More Important Than Trade Quotas - Reason Magazine
Mr. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, at times oddly charming, though at other times frustrating. The senator said it had been difficult to get Reagan to focus on policy matters. He described a meeting with him that he and other senators had sought to press for shoe and textile import limits.
The senators were told that they would have just 30 minutes with the president. Reagan began the meeting, the book said, commenting on Mr. Kennedy’s shoes — asking if they were Bostonians — and then talking for 20 minutes about shoes and his experience selling shoes for his father. “Several of us began conspicuously to glance at our watches.” But to no avail. “And it was over!” Mr. Kennedy said. “No one got a word in about shoe or textile quota legislation.”
Even among his own family, Teddy was never considered the fizziest brew in the sixer. Still, even he might have been bright enough to recognize that while he didn’t get what he wanted, it is very likely that Reagan maneuvered him like a bitch until he got exactly what he wanted.
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
Lovely…
It must have been especially galling* for the head coach of the Chappaquiddick Ladies’ Swim Team that an ex-actor (an actor, for God’s sake; where’s the justice?), occupying the high office that ol’ Teddy-Boy so clearly coveted, was able so easily to take him - the ultimate (or so he liked to think) political conniver and maneuverer - around the dance floor, have his way with him, and then leave him thwarted and unrequited.
*Assuming that he could actually comprehend the extent of The Great Communicator’s flummoxing of him - as you say, The Swimmer was never the brightest light in the family compound.