| From the Editor |
On his natural fit with wire service writing: "It is intense, high-pressure reporting and writing that, fortunately, turned out to be my special talent. In the right circumstances, I could produce a story as fast as I could type."
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On the wicked ways of editors: "I traveled with (Lyndon) Johnson to Independence, Mo., where he went to sign the Medicare bill at the Truman Library, with the former president who had first proposed it. I learned that day why there is a war between editors and reporters.
"I wrote this lead: 'President Johnson journeyed 1,000 miles today to sign the bill beginning government medical care for the aged and share "this moment of triumph" with Harry S. Truman.'
"A literalist on the AP desk in New York checked the atlas for the distance between Washington and Independence and changed it to say 996 miles."
On covering Richard Nixon's last campaign: "I never met so many people who later wound up in prison."
Mears' lead when Robert F. Kennedy died in 1968: "Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds early today, prey like his president brother to the savagery of an assassin."
Mears' lead when Hubert H. Humphrey became his party's 1968 candidate in a Chicago torn by rioting: "Hubert H. Humphrey, apostle of the politics of joy, won the Democratic presidential nomination tonight under armed guard."
On the 1976 race between peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, the accidental president: "In the end, the improbable Democrat beat the unelected Republican." (Sept.20, 2003)
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