Dick Gephardt
Dick Gephardt
Richard Andrew "Dick" Gephardtis an American politician who served as a United States Representative from Missouri from 1977 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he was House Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 and Minority Leader from 1995 to 2003. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 1988 and 2004. Gephardt was mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee in 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2008...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth31 January 1941
CountryUnited States of America
I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.
I think in some cases busing did improve the situation in some areas; in some cases it didn't. We had busing in St. Louis, and it has been ended and we are using other methods of trying to better integrate the schools.
I think a lot of people think I was born in a blue suit, on the David Brinkley show. And that isn't me. I am much more that kid who grew up in South St. Louis, in a very modest household, with a simple background with parents who didn't get through high school.
I grew up in a household that was a labor household. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver. My mother was a secretary. Neither of them got through high school. But they worked hard and they gave me very, very important opportunities to go to school, get a good education.
I grew up in the '50s and '60s when Jack Kennedy was president. We would watch him on television. And our teachers always talked about the good things public servants could do. I thought maybe that's something I should do. So when I got out of law school, my wife, Jane, and I became precinct captains.
We're talking about education, we're talking about school construction... You can't get smaller class size with just teachers, you need the buildings,
My mother used to say, 'You gotta exercise.' She would really pound on me to exercise every day. She was very physically fit; she was on the basketball team in high school in St. Louis in the 1920s, when women didn't do that. And she taught me to play tennis, taught me to walk and run, and I ran for 30 years pretty religiously.
Since Republicans refuse to put school modernization in the tax bill, we demand that it be included in the Labor-HHS bill. The president is with us on this, and we're not going home until our children and teachers get the help that they need,
I've always had good energy; I've always had good health.
I think it's time we had a president who carried the same life experiences into the White House as most ordinary Americans.
When I'm president, we'll have executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day
I've thought a lot about the world and how George Bush sees the world and it ain't even close.
I'm running for president because I've had enough of the oil barons, the status-quo apologists, the special-interest lobbyists running amok.
I think when everything is finally considered, I'll have a lot of support -- strong support -- not only from labor unions but from working people.