“It seems you are resolved to speak until your
audience arrives.”—Henry Clay, responding to a fellow member of Congress,
speaking interminably in debate, who had just told him, “You, sir, speak for
the present generation, but I speak for posterity,” quoted in Samuel A. Bent,
comp., Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men (1887).
It pains me to write this, because I don’t think much
of the man, but I was inspired to use this quote while listening to a portion
of an address given by Senator Mitch McConnell on his great predecessor from Kentucky, Henry Clay (1777-1852). McConnell couldn’t, in his wildest dreams,
match Clay for intellect, charm, and most of all,
the willingness (let alone ability) to forge compromises on the nation’s most
divisive issues.
But let’s give the Senate Minority Leader credit
where it’s due—he knows a good example of rapier wit when he hears one, not to mention one of
the most consequential politicians never to reach the White House. (Clay was,
however, the hero of a man who did become President: Abraham Lincoln.)
(In the image
here, Clay is addressing the U.S. Senate around 1850, toward the end of his
career, with the other two members of the “Great Triumvirate” also here—Daniel
Webster, seated to his left, and John C. Calhoun, seated to the left of the
Speaker’s chair. The image, now in the Library of Congress, was drawn in 1855
by Peter F. Rothermel and engraved by Robert Whitechurch.)
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