ABSTRACT
President Bill Clinton still talks about the time he spent with Thomas Hale Boggs. It was an ephemeral moment in the Louisiana congressman's hectic schedule. Boggs established useful contacts with party officials around the country, and he identified himself as a national Democrat. Boggs had hoped to be permanent chairman of the Los Angeles convention that nominated John F. Kennedy, but at the last minute he lost out to another southerner, Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida. Boggs's reaction to Kennedy's death—his instinctive tendency to blame fellow white southerners—was not typical. But then, Boggs was not a typical southern politician. The tumultuous events of 1968 played themselves out in Boggs's own life. Statements like Joe D. Waggonner's were par for the course in civil rights debates, and Boggs had heard them a hundred times. By 1972, the furor over Boggs's clash with the Federal Bureau of Investigation had subsided. So, too, had much of the criticism of Boggs as floor leader.
