second most powerful position in the house and enormously consequential job. it does all the tax legislation. he gets the control how trillions of dollars of federal money is directed. back in the day, james pope and miller fell more, you already knew that rate didn t you. or larger than life political figures like dan rostenkowski, charlie wrangle, these are titans. it is basically the and goal for a long line of legislators who want to reshape the federal government in their own ideological image, or just run a big patron operation where they got to give other goodies to various interest groups. again, even that kind of old-fashioned soft corruption, which is as old as politics, even that isn t so enticing to the contemporary republican party anymore. increasingly, what they want in their hearts, they want to be