I have never made party differences the occasion of personal quarrel or
estrangement. On the contrary, though I have been always called a
Democrat, I have many near and dear friends among the Republicans.
Politics is not war. Politics would not be war even if the politicians
were consistent and honest. But there are among them so many
changelings, cheats and rogues.
Then, in politics as elsewhere, circumstances alter cases. I have as a
rule thought very little of parties as parties, professional
politicians and party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow
older. The politician and the auctioneer might be described like the
lunatic, the lover and the poet, as “of imagination all compact.” One
sees more mares’ nests than would fill a book; the other pure gold in
pinchbeck wares; and both are out for gudgeons.
It is the habit—nay, the business—of the party speaker when he mounts
the raging stump to roar his platitudes into the ears of those who have
the simplicity to listen, though neither edified nor enlightened; to
aver that the horse he rides is sixteen feet high; that the candidate
he supports is a giant; and that he himself is no small figure of a
man.
Thus he resembles the auctioneer. But it is the mock auctioneer whom he
resembles; his stock in trade being largely, if not altogether,
fraudulent. The success which at the outset of party welfare attended
this legalized confidence game drew into it more and more players. For
a long time they deceived themselves almost as much as the voters. They
had not become professional. They were amateur. Many of them played for
sheer love of the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But as
time passed and voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increased
the temptations and opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising,
the skillful and the corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a
commodity and to organize public opinion into a bill of lading. Thus
politics as a trade, parties as trademarks, the politicians, like
harlots, plying their vocation.
Now and again an able, honest and brave man, who aims at better things,
appears. In the event that fortune favors him and he attains high
station, he finds himself surrounded and thwarted by men less able and
courageous, who, however equal to discovering right from wrong, yet
wear the party collar, owe fealty to the party machine, are sometimes
actual slaves of the party boss. In the larger towns we hear of the
City Hall ring; out in the counties of the Court House ring. We rarely
anywhere encounter clean, responsible administration and pure,
disinterested, public service.
The taxpayers are robbed before their eyes. The evil grows greater as
we near the centers of population. But there is scarcely a village or
hamlet where graft does not grow like weeds, the voters as gullible and
helpless as the infatuated victims of bunko tricks, ingeniously
contrived by professional crooks to separate the fool and his money. Is
self-government a failure?
None of us would allow the votaries of the divine right of kings to
tell us so, albeit we are ready enough to admit the imperfections of
universal suffrage, too often committing affairs of pith and moment,
even of life and death, to the arbitrament of the mob, and costing more
in cash outlay than royal establishments.
The quadrennial period in American politics, set apart and dedicated to
the election of presidents, magnifies these evil features in an
otherwise admirable system of government. That the whipper-snappers of
the vicinage should indulge their propensities comes as the order of
their nature. But the party leaders are not far behind them. Each side
construes every occurrence as an argument in its favor, assuring it
certain victory. Take, for example, the latest state election anywhere.
In point of fact, it foretold nothing. It threw no light upon coming
events, not even upon current events. It leaves the future as hazy as
before. Yet the managers of either party affect to be equally confident
that it presages the triumph of their ticket in the next national
election. The wonder is that so many of the voters will believe and be
influenced by such transparent subterfuge.
Is there any remedy for all this? I much fear that there is not.
Government, like all else, is impossible of perfection. It is as man
is—good, bad and indifferent; which is but another way of saying we
live in a world of cross purposes. We in America prefer republicanism.
But would despotism be so demurrable under a wise unselfish despot?