THE RELEVANCE OF THOMAS RILEY MARSHALL
Plunkitt, George Washington
THE RELEVANCE OF THOMAS RILEY MARSHALL By George Washington Plunkitt On observing the dementia of political thought at I.U. and realizing more sophisticated awareness exists in Botswana, the...
...v......__ democracy and possessing a smidgen of cultivation appreciates the extravaganza and breathlessly anticipates its yearly delights...
...One of politics' most magnificent performers, Thomas Riley Marshall, distinguished himself in a way we would fail to appreciate today — he meant his public statements to sound as silly as they were...
...and realizing more sophisticated awareness exists in Botswana, the editor hopes, in this column, to finally expose American politics' nauseating relevance, maculated traditions, obscene nuances, and debasing values...
...The citizenery continued to flay him mercilessly nominating him to the vice presidency in 1912...
...of history — unobstructively irrelevant...
...Born of an old-fashioned country doctor, raised in rural Indiana, and graduated from Wabash College, "Tom" Marshall read law for old Judge Olds in Fort Wayne before shingling in Columbia City...
...Upon reviewing such a noble life and brilliant chrestomathy, I reply to William F. Buckley's query "Where is there a more splendid American than Walter Judd...
...And this appears as understatement when one views his public utterances...
...The less we know the surer we are of our conclusions...
...I need a rest...
...In 1920 remarking on his erstwhile duties in presiding over the ribaldry of the Senate he remarked "I have been in the caves of the winds...
...Always the paradigmatic American, he attended the Presbyterian Church, taught Sunday school, sat on the local school board, and — most attractive of all — was a thirty-third degree Mason...
...Upon returning from a vacation in 1908 he discovered his friends had "knifed him in the back" by entering him in the gubernatorial race...
...For Vice President Marshall was one of the greatest wits ever to hold that spurious office, which is to say he was something more than a half-wit...
...Undergoing an unfortunate menopause at forty he left a life of bucolic contentment to wed a pock marked mona lisa from Angola, Lois Kinsey...
...Hoping to avoid the humiliation of public office he campaigned throughout the state shunning the usual cliches and deceits endemic to politicians and outlining a practicable platform...
...where else but in a cemetery in central Indiana, among other places...
...When will barry wheeler dazzle our ears with such tidings...
...If there is a transcendent virtue arching above the clatter and bang of American politics it is the unfailing humor characterizing it...
...Here he starts with a diamond in the rough, Thomas Riley Marshall...
...With characteristic wit and prescience during a 1918 Senatorial harangue he enshrined himself forever in American folklore, observing, "What America needs is a really good five cent cigar...
...With minor league clowns performing in the capitals of the fifty provinces, major leaguers playing on the polluted banks of the Potomac, and world record holders exercising in the East River's glass zoo, the legitimate American big top has been in decline since 1932...
...Shining through all these dark moments, the irradiance of Marshall's wit never dimmed...
...He even anticipated prp's chaotic nostrums when he sagaciously averred "what we know about things that we know nothing about is the most remarkable part of our mental equipment and our education...
...Yet his candor, civility and logic availed him little, for inexplicably the hordes elected him governor...
...TRM's favorite writer, Meredith Nicholson, famed author of "The Missing Finger" considered Marshall "the best storyteller in America...
...In contrast with the purity of TRM, Hubert Humphrey is a political lecher possessing the most prehensile ideology...
...Can we not see the timeless quality of Marshall's wisdom when he remarked that Indiana has "furnished as many first-grade second-class men in every department of life as any state in the Union...
...For like all great men TRM is and was — to the flow T.R.M...
...When interviewed by a pioneering Walter Cronkite he quipped mordantly "The model citizen today is the man who can successfully evade the laws...
...Having completed his English translation of Walter Lippmann, the Honorable George Washington Plunkitt intends to sketch the careers of some of the inimitable republic's more singular politicians...
...Though never mentioned in the insipid pages of Time, hardly a cog of spiffy cocktail conversation in New York, and never remembered by high school football coaches in their afternoon civics classes, we need merely reflect on the abomination coevally occupying the vice president's throne to assay TRM's relevance...
...Any citizen residing in this supermarket...
Vol. 1 • January 1968 • No. 4
