“A very important time in my life politically as well as otherwise.” Close association. Only Byrnes, his secretary (also from South Carolina), and Doyle were in the office. “I just began to get ideas about how it really is in American politics and American institutions in a way that I had never really glimpsed before.” Admired Byrnes greatly. “A glimpse of an extremely able and very pragmatic person, a principled person according to his lights with a totally different orientation than mine.” What the South looked like through the eyes of a white southern politician. Becoming a Democrat at this time, although the transition began as soon as he came to Washington, D.C. The difficulties of conceiving of social and economic programs, shaping them into legislation, and then shaping them into administrative application. “The total effect of it was conservative in that it was to conservatise me in the sense that my ideas about great radical transformations in the society in the right direction.... My notions about that were undercut considerably.” Herbert Wechsler was the person who paved the way for his getting the clerkship with Byrnes. A network by which young attorneys got clerkships with Supreme Court Justices.
