“Can't-do guys do all right in Washington, perhaps because lobbying is the one thing that can't-do guys almost always can do, and magnificently. Detroit may not be able to dispose of exhaust very neatly, but it can build a beautiful lobbying machine for selling Government the story of its own inadequacy.
What is it in the Washington air that restores the energies of these once dynamic American manufacturers? Something there is that brings out all the latent half-forgotten ingenuity that seems to have abandoned them back in the home plant.”

— Russell Baker

"The Can't-Do Guys" (p.47)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

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Russell Baker 40

writer and satirst from the United States 1925–2019

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Russell Baker 40

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