The tale of the patrician and the zany

People forget so quickly... Joe Wilson and his claque of flying monkeys prove you don't have to be young to be sophomoric and buffoonish.

A case in point: another "real American Republican", John LeBoutillier:

LeBoutillier grew up on Long Island's North Shore. His father was Thomas LeBoutillier, a member of a prominent family and onetimeGrumman test pilot.^[3] His mother, Pamela LeBoutillier (née Tower), is the daughter of Roderick Tower and Flora Payne Whitney, a member of the New York Whitneys who are, in turn, descendants of the Vanderbilt family. Mrs. LeBoutillier is a distant cousin of the late Senator John Tower of Texas.^[6] LeBoutillier's great great grandfather was William Collins Whitney, Secretary of the Navy under PresidentGrover Cleveland.^[3] LeBoutillier is a great grandson of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and he is also a descendant of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

He is a resident of Old Westbury, New York.

Who? you may well ask. At 27, LeBoutillier rode the Reagan landslide of 1980 to become the youngest member of the House of Representatives. He also displayed a Wilsonesque tendency to, well, act out:

At 28, John LeBoutillier (pronounce luhBOOT lee ay) is the youngest member of the 97th Congress, and, some would say, the freshest. Representing New York's 6th District, on Long Island, he is unabashedly conservative in his views, but decidedly not conservative in the way he expresses them. He has called Jimmy Carter "a complete birdbrain" and Alexander Haig "a second class politician." About Congress he wonders: "You have to ask yourself what goes on here. It's a joke." The House Foreign Affairs Committee is "a snake pit." Reagan's Cabinet is "boring." And Senator Charles Percy he characterized as "a living disaster with almost no redeeming features."

His biggest target to date has been Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, who, in LeBoutillier's words, "personifies everything about politics that the public hates today." He stepped up the assault with a halfhearted campaign to unseat the Speaker, which he has dubbed Repeal O'Neill "I designed the button myself." But the fireworks really began this July, when LeBoutillier opened a speech with the analogy, "Tip O'Neill and the federal government are the same: they're both big, fat and out of control."

LeBoutillier lost his seat in the 1982 election. At 29 his electoral career was over. Now in his mid 50s, he runs a blog where, of all things- he praises Joe Wilson, arguing, among other things, baring one's hairy ass in public:

...Demonstrated that out-of-the-norm behavior - that is behavior which shocks and is often deemed rude and inappropriate - works! If this heretofore totally unheard of Congressman hadn’t been inspired to do something he should not have done then none of the above happens.

Which is how Boots got his second term in Congress. But we digress.

Reading the Clever Boys of the SC blogdom opining on the state of play reminded us of the Tale of the Boy Boots and his momentary laceration of the Speaker of the House. It got some good play for a while, but O'Neill, who'd been in the house since 1952, knew how the game gets played over the long haul. You can be smart as a whip and be the fastest, most self-serving Tweeter on the planet, but a sense of history is a useful thing. If you aren't old enough to have it, maybe it's good to ask around. Few things are new under the sun, especially in politics.