RIP, John Dingell

Arguably the best Congressman who ever lived:

He stayed for more than 59 years—the longest tenure in congressional history. Dingell would see the Red Scare of the 1950s, the golden age of civil-rights legislation, and the end of the Cold War. He would vote for the passage of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, pushing toward his father’s goal of universal health care. And Dingell would serve with—but never, he would insist, under—11 presidents.

“Dingell has had a hand—a hugely constructive hand—in nearly every major advance in social policy over the past five-plus decades, including civil and voting rights, health, and the environment,” the congressional scholar Norm Ornstein wrote in The Atlantic when Dingell retired in 2015.