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“I learned that what they wanted to do was to keep the party together, keep it unified and expand it if possible, but to have a machinery through which they can explain to the people what the administration is up to, what they mean to accomplish. That keeps them loyal and faithful through the rigors of attack. The administration is sure to be attacked at some time and they want to be in a position to absorb that and to explain it.”
He gained a great deal from that. Of course by doing that he learned to be very nice to people. He learned to like them. I'm sure he didn't start out being attracted to people as people. I'm not sure he was at this time. I didn't know him well enough during this period to know whether he really liked them or just was playing a part. I think growth had begun in him. He was a few years older. He had knocked around a little more. He'd seen more kinds of people. He'd been in a position where he was obliged to be very nice to these same kind of people whom he was all against when they'd been trying to put “Blue-eyed Billy” Sheehan in. He'd learned to be nice to them.
Out at San Francisco what you saw was his being nice to all these people that he'd taken out to lunch. They were saying, “Hey, hello Franklin, how are you?” “How are you, Jim?”
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