B. U. G. S.

When Strom went to any function he had a staff member with him who had a set of cards with
relevant information on them about each person there whom he should know. Before Strom went
in the staffer would look at the crowd and hand him the relevant cards.

A lot of people use this fact to show that Strom was senile.

Strom did that for over half a century.

If you think it’s a sign of senility, I suggest you try looking over a hundred or so cards before you enter a room and getting the names right.

Once Strom got on a plane to Washington. He sent his wife and children up to first class, which he was paying for, then came back to his seat in the peasant class which he charged to his constituents. He sat down by me.

We had a grand old time. He gave me peanuts to eat and we talked the whole way.

The seating was three across, and Strom was in the aisle seat.

To my left was some bureaucrat who refused to even talk to Strom.

But Strom did not have his cards. And he has dealt with hundreds of thousands of people.

As soon as I told him I was a House staffer, he didn’t have to pretend any more, so he said,

“I KNOW you, don’t I?”

Not “We’ve met” but “I KNOW you.”

I gave him the answer that means, as the article below is entitled, “Get OFF It!” I did not want the clown on my left to get any information on some of the places Strom had talked with me. Strom knew that signal very well.

All this is relevant to a critism I have often gotten, and which CL repeats here:

“If you cut out your ‘but I guess I’m just a stupid hick from the South’ crap, we’ll cut out ours.”

Comment by CL — 1/8/2006

Watch me on that. Sometimes I do overdo the stupid hick bit, and it is not charming. It is TIRESOME.

The real meaning I want to convey is illustrated by the incident cited above with Strom. There are a LOT of points there.

First of all, we were both from South Carolina and were in Washington playing the game up there. The moment he found out that I was a real South Carolinian and a staff member for John Ashbrook, he relaxed completely. We had been in VERY heavy duty stuff together and we both knew the language.

This was not minor-league stuff.

We are talking about the president pro tem of the Senate. The liberals who say Ronald Reagan was dumb would interpret this as a conversation between two hicks.

Thank God for that!

Hicks like me and Strom and Dumb Ron brought down the Soviet Union, among other little things.

The Soviets got all their information about us hicks from people they could turn. These were liberals of the Ivy League type and their followers. They thought we were hicks, too.

Thank God for that!

So if I overdo the hick bit, call me on it. Any job I had to do in that guise is over, but the habits remain.

So please call me on it.

But when you are irritated, you might find it a relief to remember that this habit was fatal to many of your enemies.

It is a pretense that irritates you, but it is a pretense that DESTROYED them.