ABSTRACT
Bryce Harlow, dean of the Washington corporate lobbying community in the 1970s and advisor to President Ford’s transition, counseled members of the US Independent Telephone Association during the transition of 1976 (Harlow, 1976). Days after the election of Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia, Harlow described the requirement that lobbyists possess “a special adaptability, a flexibility, a dexterity” during times of political change. He had written speeches for presidents in the past and related to the audience his need to learn to inflect his lobbying with “vigah” after Kennedy’s victory in 1960, to infuse his speeches with Texas colloquialisms in 1963, and most lately to develop a taste for “chitlun’s and cracklin’s and good old grits with hamhock and redeye gravy.” Jimmy Carter had brought in a team of Georgia pols to oversee his transition and many were appointed to his administration and White House. Harlow continued: “I am already in training, takin’ it real slow’n easy to be all set by January. Already I am up to one grit every morning, and come Christmas I ought to be up to four or five.”
