“You said you were sending some young men down to help us, but I didn’t know they’d be this young!” Carr huffed. “One of them looks ten and the other twelve!” The one who looked ten was the bushy-haired law student from Yale, Bill Clinton. Passing for twelve was a mustachioed political writer from Washington, D.C., named Taylor Branch. They were not only young but utterly unknown in Texas, which was how Hart wanted it. He realized that it was problematic to send out-of-state political operatives to a contentious place like Texas, where mortal enemies might conspire against an outsider who dared to tell them what to do. Yet he found it necessary. The historically sharp disputes between liberal, moderate, and conservative Democrats in Texas, to say nothing of the personality clashes within each of the factions, had intensified with the nomination of McGovern, a certified liberal. It would be virtually impossible to find native Texans who were not linked to one of the warring factions and thus unacceptable to others.
