Michael Malone - Weebly

Except some people weren't happy. Not that
Ransom had the slightest personal regard for Hawk
Haig, or for Maynard Henry and the rest of the out-ofwork
construction workers, or for the union, or for
Hartford Democrats. Still, he disliked being disliked. He
disliked too certain unfounded insinuations about the
abandoned highway.
He disliked these rumors even more after it became
all too apparent that both those national officeholders,
to whose election in 1968 and 1972 he had given so
much time and money, had not behaved as gentlemen
during their abbreviated tenure in office. Ransom heard
unsavory phrases (whose inapplicability to his own
motives did not entirely mitigate the uneasiness he felt at
having such words in verbal proximity to the words
Ernest Ransom). These phrases (payoff, kickback,
hush money) were the more galling when his own
party's folly, taped and televised like some interminable
soap opera, had made the words so delectable to
mouth-watering liberals like A.A. Hayes. Had the
Dingley Day (whose cryptic editorials on "The
Highway Scandal" had momentarily increased its