Richard Shelby Quotes
I support the president 100 percent - when he's right.
Shelby, Richard. Press Conference on Party Switch. The Washington Post, 10 Nov. 1994, p. A1.
The President’s and the Parliament’s actions are all subject to the veto of the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader—self perpetuating Islamic clerics. This is the statement that explained their action of disqualifying over 1000 candidates for Parliament and the Presidency leaving only 6 who were acceptable. Then the people have a right to vote from among the 6 and can be assured that their President will not have an original thought or have any views different from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei.
Most recent American Presidents have appointed their most senior officials who were of their own political party although FDR, Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama appointed members of the opposition party to several important posts. However, in the Soviet Union, the senior officials would appoint no one to even a minor post who they did not perceive was politically reliable—was a dedicated communist and supported the views and programs of the Russian Communist Party leadership. However, rarely in America has there been any criteria of political or ideological doctrine in the hiring of staff. The George W, Bush Administration was a dramatic exception. Being a loyal Republican was totally insufficient. New officials had to be politically and philosophically consonant with the very conservative wing of the Republican party. This was bad enough but by following the same approach as the Russians and other ideological countries, the Bush administration had many of the same problems. One dramatic one was the hiring of people with no professional experience or qualifications but were ideologically perfect and totally loyal. One very dramatic example was the man appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Administration. His experience consisted of managing horse shows and he had never had anything to do with natural disasters or any other kinds of emergencies nor did he have any experience with first responders. Another is the man appointed to set up the Stock Exchange for Iraq after we occupied that country and were involved in nation building. The appointee’s only job experience had been as a White House intern and not only knew nothing about Stock Exchanges or Economics, but had no business experience as he never held any other job. There were many such examples. No other administration in modern times—Democratic or Republican—went to such lengths as the Soviets to maintain ideological purity.
He had been the President of the German Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic and had real credentials as an Economist. Many Europeans and Americans assumed that he could not be as apparently irrational as the Nazi rhetoric at the time. However, he had become a committed Nazi as this quotation demonstrates. Most of the professional men of Germany became Nazis out of conviction or as a means of getting ahead or maintining their position. Given the solid anti Fascist character of the overwhelming majority of Germans at the beginning of the 21st century. It is hard for most of us to believe that most of the Germans were ideological, Fascist, Right Wing, extremist fanatics, but the German national character transition has been remarkable and is in great part the result of a painful self examination of German history and men like Schacht.
A decision George F. Kennan had advocted had backfired and the administration was being castigated in the press. Kennan apologized to the Secretary of State. The only soldier ever so honored
Richard Craig Shelby is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Alabama. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 as a Democrat, he was the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, succeeding Thad Cochran. He previously served as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. He is the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Alabama, having surpassed John Sparkman's previous record in March 2019.
