Michael J. Fox Quotes
I'm not a shill for the Democratic Party.
Fox, Michael J. Interview by Katie Couric. CBS Evening News, CBS, 26 Oct. 2006.
Simon Cameron had switched parties from Democrat to Republican. Lincoln said of him:
This quotation illustrates a political phenomenon that used to be common in American politics—the spoils system where government activities, positions, contracts and grants were awarded to the supporters of the winning party and not to the opponents. In modern times government contracts were supposed to have been awarded on the basis of qualifications and price and not conditioned on political support. In this rare quotation, the secretary admitted to violating his own Department’s regulations and using politics as a criteria where existing laws prohibited that.
He was the chairman of the committee and the he had denied the Democrats equal access to witnesses before the meeting in a patently unfair process. When one of the minority members of the committee complained in the open hearing that the process was unfair this was his response. Most majority committee chairmen do not resort to this kind of unfair practice so this was not generally a typical practice but reflected the bitter hyperpartisanship that the House Republicans were engaging in at the time.
Michael Andrew Fox OC, known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American retired actor, author, film producer, and activist. Beginning his career in the 1970s, he first rose to prominence for portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989). Fox achieved further recognition as protagonist Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990). The trilogy's critical and commercial success led to Fox headlining several films throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Teen Wolf (1985), The Secret of My Success (1987), Casualties of War (1989), and The Frighteners (1996). He returned to television on the ABC sitcom Spin City, where he portrayed the lead role of Mike Flaherty from 1996 to 2000.
