To Kill a Tantamount

Birmingham, Ala.

My first ambition in life was to be Democratic nominee for governor of Louisiana. I was eleven years old and in a hurry. My record was clean. I had no indictments pending. Few candidates in the Louisiana of 1939 could claim as much. The Governor himself was headed for prison, and in a lamentable demonstration of political loyalty, many of his friends and supporters were planning to go with him. Some years later, as a law student at the University of Alabama, I concluded that the puerile lust for high office is endemic throughout the Deep South (more recently, of course, the disease has been reported in areas of the Northeast). Four out of five students at the University of Alabama Law School want to be governor of Alabama. The fifth wants to be the power-behind-the-throne for one, or all, of the other four.

VG

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Victor Gold

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Birmingham, Ala.

My first ambition in life was to be Democratic nominee for governor of Louisiana. I was eleven years old and in a hurry. My record was clean. I had no indictments pending. Few candidates in the Louisiana of 1939 could claim as much. The Governor himself was headed for prison, and in a lamentable demonstration of political loyalty, many of his friends and supporters were planning to go with him. Some years later, as a law student at the University of Alabama, I concluded that the puerile lust for high office is endemic throughout the Deep South (more recently, of course, the disease has been reported in areas of the Northeast). Four out of five students at the University of Alabama Law School want to be governor of Alabama. The fifth wants to be the power-behind-the-throne for one, or all, of the other four.