Elliot Richardson Quotes
There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.
Richardson, Elliot L. The Creative Balance: Government, Politics, and the Individual in America's Third Century. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.
The objective of a large proportion of the Congress then was not to improve the nation or even pass legislation, but to preserve their ideology and attack and weaken the other party. Compromise for example is probably the best legislative practice, but that Congress had a substantial number of Tea Party and other ultra conservatives who believed that any compromise at all was an immoral abandonment of principle.
The conservative newspaper was describing a leading Congressional conservative, Tom Delay. Delay had been cited three times by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee. He was also accused of many other unethical activities and he was under criminal investigation in his home State of Texas for violation of the campaign finance laws. The Beltway refers to the Beltway highway around Washington DC within the bounds of which most politicians and lobbyists work and live.
The address came to be known as the “Malaise Speech.” There was great negative reaction to the President’s being negative about America, even as many agreed with his assessment of the problem.
Louis Eugene Walcott
We live in a time where people are losing confidence in the ability of Government to solve problems.
The public confidence in government had hit an historical low during the administration of George W. Bush during which his administration was riddled with ideologues who had little competence and less inclination to solve problems. However even in those cases where the Bush administration wanted to succeed, they usually failed producing such fiascos as Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, shipping nuclear weapons components my mistake to Taiwan, illegal disclosure of the identity of CIA covert agents, and others.
With its multiplicity of committees and the polarization of the parties, Congress has been unable to legislate on large, comprehensive problems that involve more than a single issue at a time.
This was written 20 years before this issue really came to major public discussion in 2012. Vidal was often ahead of his time on matters.
Elliot Lee Richardson was an American lawyer and public servant who was a member of the cabinet of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. As U.S. Attorney General, he was a prominent figure in the Watergate Scandal, and resigned rather than obey President Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
