This button, with its mild slogan “I am for Reed. Are you?” is from powerful Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed’s 1896 run for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. When asked if he expected that his party would choose him, the notoriously acid-tongued Reed replied, “They might do worse, and they probably will.” Indeed, he did not win the nomination, but his decades in Congress were marked by legendary successes, capped by six years as Speaker.
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