I've been rereading some of my favorite passages from "All The King's Men," the great book about power and politics based in part on Huey Long, the larger-than-life Louisiana politician. And I happened across this passage, where The Boss, aka Gov. Willie Stark, is laying out his ambitions to Jack Burden, the narrator whose job it is to reveal how his boss will go to any length to get what he wants.
I would kneel down kiss a Memphis sidewalk in midday heat if either of our current county mayoral candidates gave me a quote with this much flavor. That it's about a subject, building a public hospital, that is a key issue in the county mayoral race makes it even more resonant.
"You know what I'm going to do now? Soon as I bust the tar out of that gang?""No," I said, "I don't know.""I'm going to build me the (gosh)-damnedest, biggest, chromium-platedest, formaldehyde-stinkingest free hospital and health center the All-Father ever let live. Boy, I tell you, I'm going to have a cage of canaries in every room that can sing Italian Grand Opera and there ain't going to be a nurse hasn't won a beauty contest in Atlantic City and every bedpan will be eighteen-carat gold and by God, every bedpan will have a Swiss music box attachment to play 'Turkey in the Straw' or 'The Sextet from Lucia', take your choice.""That will be swell," I said."I'll do it," he said. "You don't believe me, but I'm going to do it."
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