Les Aspin Quotes
You've got to have a theme if you're going to get Congress to do something difficult.
Leslie Aspin, U.S. Congressman (Democrat, WI), U. S. Secretary of Defense, Interview, ABC This Week, April 29, 1990
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Henry Clay for an earlier expression of this point.
His admonition did little good. That Congress passed fewer bills than any other in history.
In 1871 the congressman refused to serve as chairman of a committee to investigate the Ku Klux Klan. Such pandering to the South was common for politicians who had national aspirtation. If the politican served on such a committee, he would have to aknowledge the existance of the murders, torture, and other criminal activity of an organzation that was very popular in the South. Or he would have to cover up the KKK crimes and lose the support of Northerners. So refusing to serve on the committee was the prudent solution.
This is one of the rare quotations which shows how the paid lobbyists work with a few legislators and legislative staff members to get their legislative changes written into law without having to persuade a majority of the Congressional Committee much less a majority of the Congress. Abramoff went to jail along with others in one of the biggest political scandals in modern America.
Leslie Aspin Jr. was an American politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district from 1971 to 1993 and as the 18th United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1994.
