Political Cost Quotes
In 1862 after a Sioux uprising, a U. S. military commission condemned 303 Indians to death. The President personally reviewed the records of each case and pardoned most. On December 26, 1862 the largest public execution in American history took place with 38 Indians hanged. Lincoln's decision to commute most of the sentences was not politically popular and in the 1864 election the Republican vote margin in Minnesota was smaller than before. Minnesota Senator Alexander Ramsey told Lincoln that he should have hanged more Indians and obtained a bigger majority.
Upon learning that his son, John Quincy Adams, had been chosen President of the United States, the former President remarked:
See Louis XIV for an earlier similar idea.
The George W. Bush re-election campaign tactics were so polarizing that the two parties would not work together thereafter and little was accomplished at a time when the Bush administration had led the country into terrible problems. Ironically, what seemed like a brilliant re-election for a Republican Administration in retrospect caused an atmosphere where the voters ousted the Republican control margin in 2006, and by the election of 2008, Bush had the lowest approval rating of any President in history, and many historians felt he had become the worst President in American History.
The job of the Community Relations Service was to provide mediation and other services to promote voluntary desegregation in communities. Most Southern politicians were urging non-compliance with the Civil Rights Act, and to be a federal official who tried to persuade Southerners to desegregate was not good for a political career. Collins, to his great credit, accepted the President’s offer. Johnson’s “sales pitch” was the altruistic and patriotic side of the President which often gets overshadowed by his political machinations.
