Reading through Paul Boller's Presidential Campaigns, a highly readable history of all the American presidential campaigns from George Washington through the current incompetent incumbent, I was brought up short by his claim that Henry Clay's most famous utterance was made in 1850, not during the 1844 election campaign.
Moreover, he gets the quote wrong. It's not "I would rather be right than be President" as Boller has it, but "I had rather be right than be president." And, according to Robert Remini's excellent biography, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, it was first uttered neither in 1850 nor in 1844, but in 1839.
Boller's book was first published in 1984, and he was relying on a 1915 biography of Clay, so the mistake is understandable. However, there's no excuse for not fixing it in subsequent editions now that Remini's work is available.
Posted by jt at February 5, 2005 07:59 PM