Ann Richards
I’m saddened to hear of the passing of Ann Richards, who was a bright light among politicians, full of good spirits as well as what Anna Quindlin called "a sense of fun, irreverence and general cussedness." I hadn’t known until I read her obituary that she got her political start working for Sarah Weddington, of Roe v. Wade fame.
I see the President managed to say nice things about her, even though they were rival candidates for Governor of Texas, and Barbara Bush never forgave her for her the "born with a silver foot in his mouth" line*. (In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that people complained about Bush Sr’s lack of articulateness — his son makes him look like an orator and a statesman.)
I had the chance to talk to Ann Richards on the phone once. I had been helping interview candidates for a job at my old office, and I noticed that Richards was listed as a reference for one of them, a young woman who had worked in her law office while attending the LBJ school. So I immediately volunteered to call her. I left a message explaining why I was calling, and later that day Richards herself called me back. Her first words about the applicant were "isn’t she just the cutest little thing?" I thought this was hysterical, even though I’m sure the applicant would have cringed if she had known.
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In writing this entry, I wondered whether Richards had said the line about Bush "being born on third and thinking he hit a triple" as well as the silver foot line. It looks like credit for that one goes to Jim Hightower. The best discussion of this appears to be a digression in the comments to this old post of Brad DeLong’s. Google also taught me that the silver foot line was used as far back as 1966, and Heather Booth applied it to Bush a few weeks before Richards did. But Richards did it on television.
I can’t find the blog I read earlier today that had some great photos of Richards, so here’s an assortment via google images.
September 15th, 2006 at 6:28 am
First time I heard the ‘silver foot’ comment it was about Nelson Rockefeller – the joke was set up by having him mention Leif Ericson at a Sons of Italy meeting. Some stories are true, and some just ought to be true.