True in 1848, true today................

     No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America.  They are rare in the history of the world.  There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousands, but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak, who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.  

-Henry David Thoreau, as excerpted from his essay, Civil Disobedience