Aftermath

At stake with something more important than sex. At stake was life and death.

Richard Nixon was protected from impeachment, so long as Spiro Agnew was Vice President and would assume the presidency in Nixon’s place. Half of Washington knew that Agnew was a crook, and a boneheaded one at that. They had to get rid of Agnew before they could really go after Nixon.

Right decision or wrong decision, it was a leader’s job to make it.

The same thing happens to every President. People tell a chief executive what they think he wants to hear. Rosy economic reports, high popularity figures, promising international changes, you name it. There’s a competition to be the first with good news. Anyone who tells bad news tends to get weeded out—even if all the real news is bad.

It is one of the unfortunate aspects of the legal profession that excess carries no penalty. There is never, for a lawyer, such a thing as too much.

Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D.

If deadly violence were to be committed, he was like me. He would think it better to give than to receive.

Decisions based on incomplete information are one thing, a fact of political life. Decisions made with no information are another.

The important question wasn’t whether or not you thought you were the right one to lead. It was whether others believed you were.

What purpose and will didn’t tell you, unfortunately, was how to do something that must be done.

The lead prosecutor told the jury at my trial that I was “A sick parasite, preying on society.”

Parasite on society; this, mind you, from a lawyer.

The leaders of the Legion of Argos were out-of-this-world mad. Rigid in outlook, intolerant of minor differences. In other centuries they would have led the Inquisition, tortured the heretics, burned the witches.

“Could it wipe out life on Earth?”

“Oh, I very much doubt that. Single-celled and oceanic forms will presumably survive. But it might make life impossible for humans.”

“Actually, that tends to be my primary concern. Sponges and oysters will have to take care of themselves.”

More and more, she felt certain that the members of the Legion of Argos from the top down were mental cases. Prophecies, penances, holy cleansings, arbitrary murders to settle grievances, ethnic entry requirements, guns everywhere, regimented behavior, visitors who were effectively prisoners—all the signs of a paramilitary religious cult.

You pursue progress, even if you suspect that it is an illusion.

A thousand friends have less weight than a single enemy.

When hard times come to the party, dignity is one of the first guests to leave.

“He was acquitted; he must have been.”

“Right. Good lawyer, tainted evidence. But that doesn’t mean he was innocent.”

The heirs, naturally, wanted everything to be theirs as soon as possible. No one is more rapacious, ruthless, and impatient than a loving family member.

“But remember, it was all hearsay.”

“In Washington, hearsay’s the same as gospel truth.”

It was the age-old conundrum: How do I know that the ‘me’ who wakes after a night’s sleep is the same ‘me’ who went to bed? I don’t. I merely employ it as a working assumption, for lack of anything better.

Is that what it takes to go all the way in politics? Ambition first, everything else back in the pack?

And if it is, would any sane human want to have what it takes?