De Forest, in _Playing the Mischief_, describes Congressman Sykes
Drummond as a “Robert-the-Devil” type. This complete cynic makes an
interesting comment on the conditions around him: “A John Bull told me
yesterday that there is no such thing known in England as a municipal
ring or a thieving mayor. That is what any American of the present
day would set down as a fairy story.” If the political novel has any
validity as a commentary on national characteristics, one conclusion is
inescapable: many Americans become criminals when they accept public
office. Drummond’s comment is borne out by the two groups of novels. In
the English novel individuals such as Hamer Shawcross and Chester Nimmo
sell out to the opposition. Nimmo even engages in commercial activities
too closely related to his official duties to be quite proper. But
there is a complete absence of the corruption portrayed at all levels
of government in the American political novel.
Crawford attempted to differentiate the English from the American early
in _An American Politician_. The novel’s political naïveté renders any
of its judgments suspect, but in this Crawford appears to come close to
the truth. His opinion is that
English people ... love to associate with persons of rank and power
from a disinterested love of these things themselves, whereas
in most other countries the society of notable and influential
persons is chiefly sought from the most cynical motives of personal
advantage.... But politics in England and politics in America, so
far as the main points are concerned, are as different as it is
possible for any two social functions to be. Roughly, Government
and the doings of Government are centripetal in England, and
centrifugal in America. In England the will of the people assists
the working of Providence, whereas in America, devout persons pray
that Providence may on occasion modify the will of the people. In
England men believe in the Queen, the Royal Family, the Established
Church, and Belgravia first, and in themselves afterwards.
Americans believe in themselves devoutly, and a man who could
“establish” upon them a church, a royalty, or a peerage, would be a
very clever fellow.
His diagnosis of cynicism and self-interest as leading American
characteristics is echoed in the other novels. Good politicians do
appear, but for every Lincoln there are ten Boss Tweeds. Henry Adams’
_Democracy_ also contains passages in which American political life
is compared unfavorably with that of England. Madeleine Lee attends
an immensely boring White House reception. Not only are the guests
dull, but to her the President and his wife appear as automatons aping
royalty.
=Forces of Corruption=
Complete responsibility for corruption does not always rest with the
politician. Some office holders, like Honest John Vane, sincerely try
to stay clean. The corrupt politician usually has a collaborator in
the person of the man who buys him. In Garland’s _A Spoil of Office_
Bradley Talcott’s illusions are shattered in the legislature and in
Congress. Looking around him he finds that “to rob the commonwealth
was a joke.” State legislatures are often described as assemblages
of brigands. The “Woodchuck Session” of the legislature in Coniston
is arrant banditry, and the ones in _The Plum Tree_ and _Mr. Crewe’s
Career_ are only a little less obvious. The industrialist is usually
co-villain with his politician hireling. When he does not appear in
person, he is represented by his middleman, the professional lobbyist.
The lobbyist’s unscrupulous use of his trusting wife is the subject of
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s _Through One Administration_ (1914). Jacob
Pike, in _Playing the Mischief_, regards the institution with pride:
From his point of view, it was a kind of public life; it was
more completely “inside politics” than even electioneering or
legislation; it was, as he believed, the very germ and main-spring
of statesmanship. A leading lobbyist knew exactly how the world is
governed, and for what purpose....
This whole aspect of the American governmental process in the novel is
a very unsavory one. The industrialists are predatory robber barons who
purchase dishonest politicians in order to obtain special privilege.
In _The Charterhouse of Parma_ the Contessa dissuades Fabrizio from
going to America by explaining to him “the cult of the god _Dollar_.”
In several of his novels Sinclair declares that American foreign policy
has been determined by the industrial interests. He portrays Dollar
Diplomacy with a vengeance. In _Oil!_ he contends that the United
States joined with Britain and France to fight the Bolsheviks not
because of political ideology, but because “the creditor nations meant
to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a
government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.” He
also tells the reader that the same oil interests which backed Harding
had turned in and out of office a succession of Mexican governments
to suit their own commercial purposes. And it is not hard to see in
_Nostromo_ the influence of the American tycoon Holroyd at work when
the American cruiser _Powhatan_ appears to salute the Occidental flag
and “put an end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War.”
If the perverters of power are not demagogues with messianic complexes,
they may be gangsters who rule by ballots when bribery fails. These
subjects in the novel did not go out of vogue with the Muckraking Era
or with Prohibition. A new rash of novels about gangsters in politics
has appeared in recent years. The gunman who is concerned about
investing his money may be replacing the one who writes his name with
machine gun bullets, but his influence in politics is the same.
=The American Idealist=
The reverse side of this particular coin shows the idealist at work. He
may come out of the political wringer with his ideals mangled and his
illusions full of holes, but still he retains something of the impulse
which created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Millard Carroll in _The Grand Design_ is such a one, but he emerges
as an old man at the end of his ordeal. Nick Burr in Ellen Glasgow’s
_The Voice of the People_ (1900) is another, but his end is violent
death. In recent years this idealistic aspect of the American political
character has often found expression in heroes who engage in the direct
struggle for liberty. Both Robert Jordan and Glenn Spotswood spill
their blood on Spanish earth fighting against Franco. Were it not for
the crusading district attorneys of books such as _Ashes_ and _Caesar’s
Angel_, the implication would be that the American girds on his armor
abroad but avoids conflict in his own back yard. Even so, something of
this impression may remain with the reader.
=Responsibility at Home and Abroad=
The pattern in which a nation allows its liberties to be subverted and
destroyed is a familiar one. It is often thought that certain peoples,
like the Germans and Russians, are more susceptible to authoritarianism
than others. One stereotype of the American--descendant of Minute Men,
the man who hates cops, the fan who cherishes his right to boo the
umpire--has contributed to the impression that this submissiveness to
authority has never been a part of the American character. Lewis’s _It
Can’t Happen Here_, Dos Passos’s _District of Columbia_, and the novels
about dictators in southern states raise some doubts about the validity
of this fundamental assumption. Each of these novelists seems to feel
that the American citizen could well wake up one morning to find his
rights gone as did the German citizen of the early thirties. Lewis
dramatizes this catastrophe on a national scale, while Dos Passos,
Warren, and Langley present it on the state level. Dos Passos, all
through his trilogy, writes such frequent exhortations to vigilance
that there is little doubt that he too has worries on this score. In
_Stranger Come Home_ Shirer centers his fire on McCarthyism, but he
also goes back into history to recall the passage of the Alien and
Sedition Acts and the domestic anti-German violence of World War I.
The popular press and magazines may represent the American as one who
hearkens to the great voices on each Fourth of July and understands
what he is doing when he raises his banner on Flag Day. The novelist
often has serious doubts that he does.
Europeans have called the United States immature in world affairs. At
least one of the novels in this group examines this accusation, and
two others consider the same theme of irresponsibility on the national
level. In both _A Fool’s Errand_ and _Bricks Without Straw_ Tourgée
accused the federal government of irresponsibility. There is a close
parallel between this case and the one Europeans have made. Pursuing
an ideal, at least in part, the United States musters its enormous
industrial and economic potential, puts its great strength into the
field, and wins military victory. After talking a great deal about what
should be done, it sets up committees which write many reports. Then
the nation promptly forgets the problems of victory and happily returns
to consideration of the tariff question or who is going to win the
World Series. In the latter of his two books, Tourgée writes that the
Northern statesmen and political writers seemed always to assume that
the destruction of slavery would cure all the ills of the Negro. With a
typical flourish, he adds:
The Nation gave the jewel of liberty into the hands of the
[Negroes], armed them with the weapons of self-government, and
said: “Ye are many; protect what ye have received.” Then it took
away its hand, turned away its eyes, closed its ears to every cry
of protest or of agony, and said: “We will not aid you nor protect
you. Though you are ignorant, from you we will demand works of
wisdom. Though you are weak, great things shall be required at your
hands.” Like the ancient taskmaster, the Nation said: “_There shall
no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks._”
Nearly seventy years later, in _The Crack in the Column_, Weller said
virtually the same thing. But this time both the problem and the stakes
were global.
The picture of American politics which emerges from the political
novel is an unflattering one. Although the “smoke-filled room” may be
a cliché in the newspapers, it is a fact in the novel. The deck of
candidates is shuffled, cut, and dealt--often from the bottom. The
national conventions are a combination of circus spectacle and cynical
chicanery. And after campaigns financed by funds from special interest
groups, the people’s chosen representatives get down to the serious
business of paying off their debts while lining their pockets. The
crusaders for liberty and justice who appear can be set off against
these political liabilities. But the electorate in whose behalf they
struggle often seems unaware of the importance of the fight. Inheritors
of a tradition of dissent and individual freedom, they are fair game
for demagogues. They are also easy marks for the revolutionaries who,
for perverted purposes, exploit their sincere but naïve desire for
social and economic reform. Although the Republic somehow seems to
weather periods of internecine violence and reversion to authoritarian
rule, its citizens have a bad case of myopia in the field of foreign
affairs. There are indications, though, that the corrective lenses
bought in two world wars are beginning to bring distant events into
focus. The American novelist’s view of his own political arena agrees
surprisingly well with many foreign estimates of it. The American seems
like an immature giant who tolerates much rough behavior but rushes
into conflict when he feels that his basic security is threatened.
Now the giant seems to be settling down. Still likely to make violent
moves, he is acquiring some of the political sophistication that was,
perhaps, too early expected of him.