Intelligence briefings: "I learned not to go to those intelligence briefings because you can read it all in the New York Times the next morning, and I don't want to be charged with any leaks."
Reporters: "They just look for a smart-ass remark. They already got their stories written, and they're just looking for filler to show they did a little bit of work."
The folks who run Bob Jones University, the controversial Christian college in South Carolina: "Jackasses."
Farmers: "They're freeloaders on government."
But Hollings doesn't just spout outrageous opinions. He also tells outrageous stories.
"The black church is the stability of the African American community," he says. "There isn't any question about that. And they're all fine and I work with 'em, but they expect the money to get out the vote. . . . I can tell you of one race -- the minister is now dead. This is 20-odd years ago. He kept saying, 'I gotta get the money. I gotta get $10,000.' I got a friend to give him the $10,000 to get the black ministers to get the vote out. And, by God, [Republicans] came around after us and said, 'I know you need a steeple on that church -- here's $15,000, just don't hurt me tomorrow.' And that minister went up to Anderson, S.C., because his aunt got very sick and he had to go. And the Republicans took that [precinct]. . . . Republicans know how to run elections way better than Democrats. They're calculating! Hell, they know money talks. They get the best pollsters, the best consultants, the best techniques, the best of Hollywood. Hell, they elected a movie star -- Ronald Reagan. Jesus Christ!"
Going His Own Way
"He had me locked up," says Rep. James Clyburn, a fellow South Carolina Democrat.
Clyburn laughs. "I tease him about that. He says, 'I didn't do it, it was the mayor.' "
He's talking about a 1960 anti-segregation sit-in in Orangeburg, S.C. Clyburn was one of the black students arrested. Hollings was the governor, having campaigned as a segregationist. He invited the students to a meeting.
"I was impressed with him at the meeting," Clyburn says. "He made it very clear to us that while he was protecting [segregation], he did not necessarily agree that it was the best system. . . . He also taught me my first political lesson: He made it very clear to us that what he said to us was personal, and he didn't want it repeated to the media that was waiting outside the door. He didn't want to have to deny saying it."
Back then, Hollings was 38, the boy-wonder governor and rising star of South Carolina politics. Son of a store owner who lost everything in the Depression, he fought in World War II, earned a law degree, then ran for the legislature in 1948, the year Gov. Strom Thurmond ran for president as head of the pro-segregation Dixiecrat Party.
Hollings voted for Thurmond over Harry Truman, who is now one of his political heroes. "Good God -- NATO, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan," Hollings says, ticking off Truman's accomplishments. "But as a young politician in '48, hell, I wasn't thinkin' of any of those things. I was thinkin' of gettin' elected."
He got elected. And reelected. Then in 1952, he was dispatched to the Supreme Court to help argue the state's case for school segregation. He heard a lawyer for the other side say, "How in the world can you ask them to serve in the front lines in Europe and when they come home, ask them to sit in the back of the bus?"
"As a veteran, that just struck me," he says. "I realized that just ain't right."
