A Preface to Politics

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Half-truths and illusions, if you like, but tonic. This view will suit
our mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will become
more real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead of
being swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up and
affirm the issues we propose to handle. Perhaps we shall say with
Nietzsche:

"Let the value of everything be determined afresh by you."

CHAPTER VIII

THE RED HERRING

At the beginning of every campaign the newspapers tell about secret
conferences in which the candidate and his managers decide upon "the line
of attack." The approach to issues, the way in which they shall be
stressed, what shall be put forward in one part of the country and what
in another, are discussed at these meetings. Here is where the real
program of a party is worked out. The document produced at the convention
is at its best nothing but a suggestive formality. It is not until the
speakers and the publicity agents have actually begun to animate it that
the country sees what the party is about. It is as if the convention
adopted the Decalogue, while these secret conferences decided which of
the Commandments was to be made the issue. Almost always, of course, the
decision is entirely a "practical" one, which means that each section of
people is exhorted to practice the commandment it likes the most. Thus
for the burglars is selected, not the eighth tablet, but the one on which
is recommended a day of rest from labor; to the happily married is
preached the seventh commandment.

These conferences are decisive. On them depends the educational value of
a campaign, and the men who participate in them, being in a position to
state the issues and point them, determine the political interests of the
people for a considerable period of time. To-day in America, for example,
no candidate can escape entirely that underlying irritation which
socialists call poverty and some call the high cost of living. But the
conspicuous candidates do decide what direction thought shall take about
this condition. They can center it upon the tariff or the trusts or even
the currency.

Thus Mr. Roosevelt has always had a remarkable power of diverting the
country from the tariff to the control of the trusts. His Democratic
opponents, especially Woodrow Wilson, are, as I write, in the midst of
the Presidential campaign of 1912, trying to focus attention on the
tariff. In a way the battle resembles a tug-of-war in which each of the
two leading candidates is trying to pull the nation over to his favorite
issue. On the side you can see the Prohibitionists endeavoring to make
the country see drink as a central problem; the emerging socialists
insisting that not the tariff, or liquor, or the control of trusts, but
the ownership of capital should be the heart of the discussion. Electoral
campaigns do not resemble debates so much as they do competing amusement
shows where, with bright lights, gaudy posters and persuasive, insistent
voices, each booth is trying to collect a crowd; The victory in a
campaign is far more likely to go to the most plausible diagnosis than to
the most convincing method of cure. Once a party can induce the country
to see its issue as supreme the greater part of its task is done.

The clever choice of issues influences all politics from the petty
manoeuvers of a ward leader to the most brilliant creative
statesmanship. I remember an instance that happened at the beginning of
the first socialist administration in Schenectady: The officials had out
of the goodness of their hearts suspended a city ordinance which forbade
coasting with bob-sleds on the hills of the city. A few days later one of
the sleds ran into a wagon and a little girl was killed. The opposition
papers put the accident into scareheads with the result that public
opinion became very bitter. It looked like a bad crisis at the very
beginning and the old ring politicians made the most of it. But they had
reckoned without the political shrewdness of the socialists. For in the
second day of excitement, the mayor made public a plan by which the main
business street of the town was to be lighted with high-power lamps and
turned into a "brilliant white way of Schenectady." The swiftness with
which the papers displaced the gruesome details of the little girl's
death by exultation over the business future of the city was a caution.
Public attention was shifted and a political crisis avoided. I tell this
story simply as a suggestive fact. The ethical considerations do not
concern us here.

There is nothing exceptional about the case. Whenever governments enter
upon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick is
practiced. In the Southern States the race issue has been thrust forward
persistently to prevent an economic alignment. Thus you hear from
Southerners that unless socialism gives up its demand for racial
equality, the propaganda cannot go forward. How often in great strikes
have riots been started in order to prevent the public from listening to
the workers' demands! It is an old story--the red herring dragged across
the path in order to destroy the scent.

Having seen the evil results we have come to detest a conscious choice of
issues, to feel that it smacks of sinister plotting. The vile practice of
yellow newspapers and chauvinistic politicians is almost the only
experience of it we have. Religion, patriotism, race, and sex are the
favorite red herrings of foul political method--they are the most
successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those
unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet for
all its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is one of the high
selective arts of the statesman. In the debased form we know it there is
little encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen angel, and when
God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants. It is always a pretty
good working rule that whatever is a great power of evil may become a
great power for good. Certainly nothing so effective in the art of
politics can be left out of the equipment of the statesman.

Looked at closely, the deliberate making of issues is very nearly the
core of the statesman's task. His greatest wisdom is required to select a
policy that will fertilize the public mind. He fails when the issue he
sets is sterile; he is incompetent if the issue does not lead to the
human center of a problem; whenever the statesman allows the voters to
trifle with taboos and by-products, to wander into blind alleys like "16
to 1," his leadership is a public calamity. The newspaper or politician
which tries to make an issue out of a supposed "prosperity" or out of
admiration for the mere successes of our ancestors is doing its best to
choke off the creative energies in politics. All the stultification of
the stand-pat mind may be described as inability, and perhaps
unwillingness, to nourish a fruitful choice of issues.

That choice is altogether too limited in America, anyway. Political
discussion, whether reactionary or radical, is monotonously confined to
very few issues. It is as if social life were prevented from irrigating
political thought. A subject like the tariff, for example, has absorbed
an amount of attention which would justify an historian in calling it the
incubus of American politics. Now the exaltation of one issue like that
is obviously out of all proportion to its significance. A contributory
factor it certainly is, but the country's destiny is not bound up finally
with its solution. The everlasting reiterations about the tariff take up
altogether too much time. To any government that was clear about values,
that saw all problems in their relation to human life, the tariff would
be an incident, a mechanical device and little else. High protectionist
and free trader alike fall under the indictment--for a tariff wall is
neither so high as heaven nor so broad as the earth. It may be necessary
to have dykes on portions of the seashore; they may be superfluous
elsewhere. But to concentrate nine-tenths of your attention on the
subject of dykes is to forget the civilization they are supposed to
protect. A wall is a wall: the presence of it will not do the work of
civilization--the absence of it does not absolve anyone from the tasks of
social life. That a statecraft might deal with the tariff as an aid to
its purposes is evident. But anyone who makes the tariff the principal
concern of statecraft is, I believe, mistaking the hedge for the house.

The tariff controversy is almost as old as the nation. A more recent one
is what Senator La Follette calls "The great issue before the American
people to-day, ... the control of their own government." It has taken the
form of an attack on corruption, on what is vaguely called "special
privilege" and of a demand for a certain amount of political machinery
such as direct primaries, the initiative, referendum, and recall. The
agitation has a curious sterility: the people are exhorted to control
their own government, but they are given very little advice as to what
they are to do with it when they control it. Of course, the leaders who
spend so much time demanding these mechanical changes undoubtedly see
them as a safeguard against corrupt politicians and what Roosevelt calls
"their respectable allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legislated
and decided as if in some way the vested rights of privilege had a first
mortgage on the whole United States." But look at the _way_ these
innovations are presented and I think the feeling is unavoidable that the
control of government is emphasized as an end in itself. Now an
observation of this kind is immediately open to dispute: it is not a
clear-cut distinction but a rather subtle matter of stress--an impression
rather than a definite conviction.

Yet when you look at the career of Judge Lindsey in Denver the impression
is sharpened by contrast. What gave his exposure of corruption a peculiar
vitality was that it rested on a very positive human ideal: the happiness
of children in a big city. Lindsey's attack on vice and financial jobbery
was perhaps the most convincing piece of muckraking ever done in this
country for the very reason that it sprang from a concern about real
human beings instead of abstractions about democracy or righteousness.
From the point of view of the political hack, Judge Lindsey made a most
distressing use of the red herring. He brought the happiness of childhood
into political discussion, and this opened up a new source of political
power. By touching something deeply instinctive in millions of people,
Judge Lindsey animated dull proposals with human interest. The
pettifogging objections to some social plan had very little chance of
survival owing to the dynamic power of the reformers. It was an excellent
example of the creative results that come from centering a political
problem on human nature.

If you move only from legality to legality, you halt and hesitate, each
step is a monstrous task. If the reformer is a pure opportunist, and lays
out only "the next step," that step will be very difficult. But if he
aims at some real human end, at the genuine concerns of men, women, and
children, if he can make the democracy see and feel that end, the little
mechanical devices of suffrage and primaries and tariffs will be dealt
with as a craftsman deals with his tools. But to say that we must make
tools first, and then begin, is to invert the process of life. Men did
not agree to refrain from travel until a railroad was built. To make the
manufacture of instruments an ideal is to lose much of their ideal value.
A nation bent upon a policy of social invention would make its tools an
incident. But just this perception is lacking in many propagandists. That
is why their issues are so sterile; that is why the absorption in "next
steps" is a diversion from statesmanship.

The narrowness of American political issues is a fixation upon
instruments. Tradition has centered upon the tariff, the trusts, the
currency, and electoral machinery as the items of consideration. It is
the failure to go behind them--to see them as the pale servants of a
vivid social life--that keeps our politics in bondage to a few problems.
It is a common experience repeated in you and me. Once our profession
becomes all absorbing it hardens into pedantry. "A human being," says
Wells, "who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first
place, or a statesman in the first place is thereby and inevitably,
though he bring God-like gifts to the pretense--a quack."

Reformers particularly resent the enlargement of political issues. I have
heard socialists denounce other socialists for occupying themselves with
the problems of sex. The claim was that these questions should be put
aside so as not to disturb the immediate program. The socialists knew
from experience that sex views cut across economic ones--that a new
interest breaks up the alignment. Woodrow Wilson expressed this same fear
in his views on the liquor question: after declaring for local option he
went on to say that "the questions involved are social and moral and are
not susceptible of being made part of a party program. Whenever they have
been made the subject matter of party contests they have cut the lines of
party organization and party action athwart, to the utter confusion of
political action in every other field.... I do not believe party programs
of the highest consequence to the political life of the State and of the
nation ought to be thrust on one side and hopelessly embarrassed for long
periods together by making a political issue of a great question which is
essentially non-political, non-partisan, moral and social in its nature."

That statement was issued at the beginning of a campaign in which Woodrow
Wilson was the nominee of a party that has always been closely associated
with the liquor interests. The bogey of the saloon had presented itself
early: it was very clear that an affirmative position by the candidate
was sure to alienate either the temperance or the "liquor vote." No doubt
a sense of this dilemma is partly responsible for Wilson's earnest plea
that the question of liquor be left out of the campaign. He saw the
confusion and embarrassment he speaks of as an immediate danger. Like his
views on immigration and Chinese labor it was a red herring across his
path. It would, if brought into prominence, cut the lines of party action
athwart.

His theoretical grounds for ignoring the question in politics are very
interesting just because they are vitalized by this practical difficulty
which he faced. Like all party men Woodrow Wilson had thrust upon him
here a danger that haunts every political program. The more issues a
party meets the less votes it is likely to poll. And for a very simple
reason: you cannot keep the citizenship of a nation like this bound in
its allegiance to two large parties unless you make the grounds of
allegiance very simple and very obvious. If you are to hold five or six
million voters enlisted under one emblem the less specific you are and
the fewer issues you raise the more probable it is that you can stop this
host from quarreling within the ranks.

No doubt this is a partial explanation of the bareness of American
politics. The two big parties have had to preserve a superficial
homogeneity; and a platitude is more potent than an issue. The minor
parties--Populist, Prohibition, Independence League and Socialist--have
shown a much greater willingness to face new problems. Their view of
national policy has always been more inclusive, perhaps for the very
reason that their membership is so much more exclusive. But if anyone
wishes a smashing illustration of this paradox let him consider the rapid
progress of Roosevelt's philosophy in the very short time between the
Republican Convention in June to the Progressive Convention in August,
1912. As soon as Roosevelt had thrown off the burden of preserving a
false harmony among irreconcilable Republicans, he issued a platform full
of definiteness and square dealing with many issues. He was talking to a
minority party. But Roosevelt's genius is not that of group leadership.
He longs for majorities. He set out to make the campaign a battle between
the Progressives and the Democrats--the old discredited Republicans fell
back into a rather dead conservative minority. No sooner did Roosevelt
take the stump than the paradox loomed up before him. His speeches began
to turn on platitudes--on the vague idealism and indisputable moralities
of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. The fearlessness of the
Chicago confession was melted down into a featureless alloy.

The embarrassment from the liquor question which Woodrow Wilson feared
does not arise because teetotaler and drunkard both become intoxicated
when they discuss the saloon. It would come just as much from a radical
program of land taxation, factory reform, or trust control. Let anyone of
these issues be injected into his campaign and the lines of party action
would be cut "athwart." For Woodrow Wilson was dealing with the
inevitable embarrassment of a party system dependent on an inexpressive
homogeneity. The grouping of the voters into two large herds costs a
large price: it means that issues must be so simplified and selected that
the real demands of the nation rise only now and then to the level of
political discussion. The more people a party contains the less it
expresses their needs.

Woodrow Wilson's diagnosis of the red herring in politics is obviously
correct. A new issue does embarrass a wholesale organization of the
voters. His desire to avoid it in the midst of a campaign is
understandable. His urgent plea that the liquor question be kept a local
issue may be wise. But the general philosophy which says that the party
system should not be cut athwart is at least open to serious dispute.
Instead of an evil, it looks to me like progress towards greater
responsiveness of parties to popular need. It is good to disturb
alignments: to break up a superficial unanimity. The masses of people
held together under the name Democratic are bound in an enervating
communion. The real groups dare not speak their convictions for fear the
crust will break. It is as if you had thrown a large sheet over a mass of
men and made them anonymous.

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians.
He musses up what had been so tidily arranged. I remember once speaking
to a local boss about woman suffrage. His objections were very simple:
"We've got the organization in fine shape now--we know where every voter
in the district stands. But you let all the women vote and we'll be
confused as the devil. It'll be an awful job keeping track of them." He
felt what many a manufacturer feels when somebody has the impertinence to
invent a process which disturbs the routine of business.

Hard as it is upon the immediate plans of the politician, it is a
national blessing when the lines of party action are cut athwart by new
issues. I recognize that the red herring is more often frivolous and
personal--a matter of misrepresentation and spite--than an honest attempt
to enlarge the scope of politics. However, a fine thing must not be
deplored because it is open to vicious caricature. To the party worker
the petty and the honest issue are equally disturbing. The break-up of
the parties into expressive groups would be a ventilation of our national
life. No use to cry peace when there is no peace. The false bonds are
best broken: with their collapse would come a release of social energy
into political discussion. For every country is a mass of minorities
which should find a voice in public affairs. Any device like proportional
representation and preferential voting which facilitates the political
expression of group interests is worth having. The objection that popular
government cannot be conducted without the two party system is, I
believe, refuted by the experience of Europe. If I had to choose between
a Congressional caucus and a coalition ministry, I should not have to
hesitate very long. But no one need go abroad for actual experience: in
the United States Senate during the Taft administration there were really
three parties--Republicans, Insurgents and Democrats. Public business
went ahead with at least as much effectiveness as under the old Aldrich
ring.

There are deeper reasons for urging a break-up of herd-politics. It is
not only desirable that groups should be able to contribute to public
discussion: it is absolutely essential if the parliamentary method is not
to be superseded by direct and violent action. The two party system
chokes off the cry of a minority--perhaps the best way there is of
precipitating an explosion. An Englishman once told me that the utter
freedom of speech in Hyde Park was the best safeguard England had against
the doctrines that were propounded there. An anarchist who was invited to
address Congress would be a mild person compared to the man forbidden to
speak in the streets of San Diego. For many a bomb has exploded into
rhetoric.

The rigidity of the two-party system is, I believe, disastrous: it
ignores issues without settling them, dulls and wastes the energies of
active groups, and chokes off the protests which should find a civilized
expression in public life. A recognition of what an incubus it is should
make us hospitable to all those devices which aim at making politics
responsive by disturbing the alignments of habit. The initiative and
referendum will help: they are a method of voting on definite issues
instead of electing an administration in bulk. If cleverly handled these
electoral devices should act as a check on a wholesale attitude toward
politics. Men could agree on a candidate and disagree on a measure.
Another device is the separation of municipal, state and national
elections: to hold them all at the same time is an inducement to prevent
the voter from splitting his allegiance. Proportional representation and
preferential voting I have mentioned. The short ballot is a psychological
principle which must be taken into account wherever there is voting: it
will help the differentiation of political groups by concentrating the
attention on essential choices. The recall of public officials is in part
a policeman's club, in part a clumsy way of getting around the American
prejudice for a fixed term of office. That rigidity which by the mere
movement of the calendar throws an official out of office in the midst of
his work or compels him to go campaigning is merely the crude method of a
democracy without confidence in itself. The recall is a half-hearted and
negative way of dealing with this difficulty. It does enable us to rid
ourselves of an officer we don't like instead of having to wait until the
earth has revolved to a certain place about the sun. But we still have to
vote on a fixed date whether we have anything to vote upon or not. If a
recall election is held when the people petition for it, why not all
elections?

In ways like these we shall go on inventing methods by which the
fictitious party alignments can be dissolved. There is one device
suggested now and then, tried, I believe, in a few places, and vaguely
championed by some socialists. It is called in German an
"Interessenvertrag"--a political representation by trade interests as
well as by geographical districts. Perhaps this is the direction towards
which the bi-cameral legislature will develop. One chamber would then
represent a man's sectional interests as a consumer: the other his
professional interests as a producer. The railway workers, the miners,
the doctors, the teachers, the retail merchants would have direct
representation in the "Interessenvertrag." You might call it a Chamber of
Special Interests. I know how that phrase "Special Interests" hurts. In
popular usage we apply it only to corrupting businesses. But our feeling
against them should not blind us to the fact that every group in the
community has its special interests. They will always exist until mankind
becomes a homogeneous jelly. The problem is to find some social
adjustment for all the special interests of a nation. That is best
achieved by open recognition and clear representation. Let no one then
confuse the "Interessenvertrag" with those existing legislatures which
are secret Chambers of Special Privilege.

The scheme is worth looking at for it does do away with the present
dilemma of the citizen in which he wonders helplessly whether he ought to
vote as a consumer or as a producer. I believe he should have both votes,
and the "Interessenvertrag" is a way.

These devices are mentioned here as illustrations and not as conclusions.
You can think of them as arrangements by which the red herring is turned
from a pest into a benefit. I grant that in the rigid political
conditions prevailing to-day a new issue is an embarrassment, perhaps a
hindrance to the procedure of political life. But instead of narrowing
the scope of politics, to avoid it, the only sensible thing to do is to
invent methods which will allow needs and problems and group interests
avenues into politics.

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