“It’s better to have the camel inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.” — a fundamental rule of political alliance and accommodation, but originally spoken by whom about whom? I’ve been repeating the conventional wisdom that it was Lyndon Johnson explaining why he appointed J. Edgar Hoover head of the FBI for life in the mid ’60s, but a friend says some other politician or essayist said this first in the 1920s.

January 14, 2008by Jeffrey Wells13 Comments