Three Days Before the Shooting by Ralph Ellison

AROUND ME NOW, LEGISLATORS, reporters, and lobbyists were going over the Senator's career, much of it in whispers, recalling his combination of geniality and viciousness, his technique of delivering jabs below the belt in the guise of humor, the manner in which his obsession with racial matters had recently led to sharp discontinuities of argument, non sequiturs, gaffes-all erupting during moments when he seemed most seriously concerned with major legislation. Some noted his excellence in debate and his great skill in mimicry (a gift which provided his opponents with much discomfort), his frequent violations of private confidences in public debate, during which he was apt to say almost anything. And from a position of apparent logic, and in the interest of the highest principles.

Others were rehearsing how the Senator, a Northerner, flaunted his association with the Southern bloc to the embarrassment of his party, and how he boldly asserted the realism of his actions. Several of the discussants held that the Senator was more honest and responsible to the public than those who pretended that such collaborations across party and sectional lines were both unnecessary and immoral. To pretend that such wheeling and dealing isn't necessary, the Senator has insisted, is to misguide and miseducate the public as to the real difficulties of governing a diversified nation, and to obscure from the electorate the true nature of its conflicting interests. Certain party leaders have regarded the Senator's position as an attack upon the very foundation of their power.