House Out of Order: Representative from Missouri A Congressman offers a stimulating program of reform for the House of Representatives to bring back true representative government to the American people

Inscribed on first blank page: To Mark Hollabaugh With best wishes Richard Bolling Wash., D.C. June 28, 1965

Clean text. Price unclipped ($4.95). Protected by Brodart dust jacket cover.

Book in very good plus condition. Dust jacket in good condition with some staining on front and spine. Small crease on right front bottom.

Richard Walker Bolling (May 17, 1916 – April 21, 1991) was a prominent Democratic Congressman from Kansas City, Missouri, and Missouri's 5th congressional district from 1949 to 1983. He retired after serving for four years as the chairman of the powerful United States House Committee on Rules.

From Commentary...

House Out of Order was written to stimulate opinion-makers to "inform the American people about the wretched condition of their national legislature." Considering the source, it is a startling book—something like an event in American politics.

Richard Bolling has represented a district from Kansas City in the House of Representatives for more than fifteen years; and eight terms is a serious matter in the House. Even more significant, Representative Bolling was for a number of years a prime protégé of the late Speaker Sam Rayburn, so he is informed as to the inner workings of the House as few members are ever privileged to be. He is, moreover, an important liberal leader—strong enough, a few years ago after the death of Rayburn, to buck for the position of Majority Leader (unsuccessfully). But apart from the credentials of the author, the argument of the book is right. It concludes as follows: "The failure of the House is the failure of the Democratic party of which I am a member. Its responsibility cannot be evaded much longer without reducing the national assembly to impotence, which would mean a vital failure in the democratic process itself."

...

Bolling has told a story that many politicians could have told. The reason he did and others have not, is that he is a fallen golden-boy who has not yet run out of strength. He is too big to quit quietly (also, he is probably—and justifiably—angry, although the book is written without rancor). During the 50's, he was the bridge between Rayburn and the liberals—just as Humphrey, on the other side of the Hill, was the bridge between Johnson and the liberals. But when Rayburn died and Bolling could no longer "deliver" him, the liberals decided in their august purity that Bolling had cut too many corners and defied too many pieties in his previous brokerage.