In addition, the majority leader arranged to meet privately with Biden at least once a week on Capitol Hill.
"I thought it was everyone (who conferred with the leader this way) but after a while I learned I was the only freshman he was talking to like this," Biden said.
Mansfield, said Oberdorfer, was "Biden's unseen sponsor and a caring but businesslike tutor."
LOT LIZARDS
The public flap continues to swirl over several grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, with the latest person in the hot seat being Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
Waxman had recently sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson expressing "outrage" about questions raised concerning NIH grants. Now the congressman has received a letter.
"Congressman, if you think you are mad, wait until you see how angry the American people get when they discover that you and your allies at NIH have been using federal tax dollars to study 'lot lizards' - prostitutes who service truckers in parking lots," writes Andrea S. Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition.
One example of NIH-funded "research" brought to Waxman's attention: homosexual and bisexual Mexican immigrants' incorporation into U.S. homosexual life and the study of homosexual jealousy.