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CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

You just suggested a minute ago that Bob would make a fine President of the United States. He doesn't seem to have that ambition, though, does he?

MAURY MAVERICK:

Well, a lot of people who would make a good President of the United States know that they can't be President. I think that I would make a good appellate justice, a federal appellate justice, but I'm not ever going to get to be one. Bob is realistic. He said that he would rather "hang from the tit of his Congressional district in Harris County than cling to the cold bosom of Texas." That probably is a realistic thing and it's probably the truth. He couldn't go anywhere in Texas, I don't think. They would do a job on him and they may do a job on him in Houston before it's all over. His great threat is that some member of the minority is going to run against him and polish him off like they polished me off in Bexar County. The white Anglo-liberal in the South is going to more and more become a gadfly and he is going to have to understand that about himself. That's important. That's all right. I'm a gadfly and I understand that role, but now that the Supreme Court has said that you run in smaller legislative districts instead of countywide, the blacks are going to elect blacks for another hundred years and the browns are going to elect browns. Where in the hell is a white liberal going to get elected in the smaller races in Texas? There is nowhere in Bexar County that I can run. I don't have a constituency anymore. That wiped out, I think, the white liberals in the smaller races in Texas.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

So far as electoral politics goes?

MAURY MAVERICK:

Yes. It may be all right, because it is right for blacks and browns to have their own liberals and it's o.k., but I think that the white liberal has to understand that about himself and not worry about it, sort of be like Wayne Morse was when he got in and not worry every five minutes about being reelected and understand that you are not and go on and play your role.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Do you think that for the middle-aged white liberal that is a role that he can accept gracefully, to give his electoral base to the minorities?

MAURY MAVERICK:

Well, he will act like he is graceful about it. I am not so damn gracious about it now in the deep recesses of my heart because I think that I would be a better legislator than some of the blacks and browns. I'm getting a little reverse Jim Crow and I don't like it and hell, I don't have to like it just because I'm white and Protestant, I don't have to like it. I would at least like to get beaten for the right reasons if I am going to get beaten. I think that is a phase that we are going to go through.