Word: mcpherson
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...HARRY McPHERSON...
...Washington, where most political memoirists write in the blood of their foes, Harry McPherson is a kind of vegetarian. A Texas liberal who served on both Lyndon Johnson's Senate and White House staffs, McPherson believes in binding wounds, not opening them. He has a refreshing affection for the processes of government and the fallibilities of the powerful. His sketches and assessments of Washington politicians are unrivaled...
...example, McPherson agrees with the conventional wisdom that Hubert Humphrey is warm, open, self-amused, bursting with affirmation of life. But he also sees Humphrey as a man not ruthless enough to carry through with the consequences of his judgments. Elsewhere, McPherson gets William Fulbright just right: "Bored by the kind of things with which most Senators were agreeably concerned, he was skeptical of man's ability to choose a reasonable course. He sometimes seemed to have a stake in losing, in being isolated and right...
...McPherson shrewdly contrasts the congressional personality with the presidential. To be effective, he says, the legislator must master the black arts of the back room; this spoils his image for the general public, which seeks a purer hero for President. John Kennedy understood this, says McPherson, and shirked his senatorial duties while making himself appealing to the public. To Lyndon Johnson, says McPherson, J.F.K. was the "enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin...
...denominations. Mary Baker Eddy started one of the nation's only female-dominated religions, Christian Science; though the denomination has no ordained ministers, a majority of its 5,848 "practitioners," or healers, are women. More recently the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s, has followed a similar pattern: today at least 40% of its 2,690 clergy are female...