Herman Talmadge as Senator.

As governor between 1948 and 1954, using a creative financing mechanism similar to Gov. Roy Barnes' current transportation funding plan, more than 1,000 schools were built and 1,000 one-room schools were closed. Talmadge established the Highway Board, ostensibly to bring order and reduce the politics of roads, and instituted competitive bidding, hired professional engineers and gave them Merit System protecton. By the time he left office, Georgia had paved or planned for 12,800 miles of roads. In the U.S. Senate, he became a powerhouse in the Southern tradition: Stay there, work hard, gain power, and transfer Yankee wealth south. Southerners of the working class, until recent times, always have felt slightly inferior. Our schools, our jobs, our farms, our economic opportunities were always inadequate. Our accents wherever we went betrayed us, revealing our disadvantages and, we suspected, our inferiority. The Hollywood Tobacco Road stereotype confirmed it. But then came Watergate and U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge and Committee Chairman Sam Ervin. There for all the world to see was lawyerly brilliance in Southern voice, intellectually quick, astute, incisive, marvelously Southern. Before Jimmy Carter, there was Herman Talmadge. No doubt in my mind, Talmadge and Ervin made the Carter presidency possible. Most Georgians never knew Talmadge. He outlived himself. But to those who have come from the swamps and hills and piney woods of Georgia, Talmadge was us. Whatever his successes, faults or shortcomings, he was us.