the smartest guys in the room bethany mclean

Nobody seems to be doing anything.'įrom testimony by Ms. You go into his office and it always seems empty. The bad stuff is that I've never seen him take leadership on anything. If he doesn't know anything about the subject, he says nothing rather than say something dumb. He'll get right to the heart of something after everyone has been running at the mouth and he'll be able to say what has to be done. In meetings, he is incisive, sometimes the smartest person in the room. 'You want to know about Bob Nix?' asks an aide to another Pennsylvania congressman. dimensions.įrom Biography News (March/April 1975) : Like a sturdy table, a person must have four underpinnings long enough to reach the ground. It is not enough to be the smartest person in the room, nor is it enough to be 'in' with the socially elite. Each of us, as we seek to grow in understanding, recognizes that there must be balance in life. No person achieves greatness unless he has maturity in these four essential dimensions of life. This pamphlet appears to have been issued in the wake of the 1967 Detroit riot.įrom Ralph Regula, ' Class of 1973-America Needs You,' in Congressional Record (June 27, 1973): At this point in his life, he is like the exciting, undefeated boxer who comes out of the ring from his first great beating.Ĭavanagh was mayor of Detroit from 1962 to 1970.

He is blessed with mental toughness, a sense of humor, and an Irish fatalism which holds that life was never supposed to be that good anyway. When men of concern gather in his office, Cavanagh is usually the smartest guy in the room. If anyone can salvage a political situation, it is Cavanagh. From a 28-page pamphlet titled ' Detroit.

Google Books finds instances of the phrase 'the smartest guy/person in the room' from long before it became a popular saying in mainstream U.S.

The smartest guys in the room bethany mclean