Nowhere "on God's green earth"--it is fitting, that this paper contain
a bit of bosh--nowhere is so much insufferable stuff talked in a given
period of time as in an American political convention. It is there that
all those objectionable elements of the national character which evoke
the laughter of Europe and are the despair of our friends find freest
expression, unhampered by fear of any censorship more exacting than
that of "the opposing party"--which takes no account of intellectual
delinquencies, but only of moral. The "organs" of the "opposing party"
will not take the trouble to point out--even to observe--that the
"debasing sentiments" and "criminal views" uttered in speech and
platform are expressed in sickening syntax and offensive rhetoric.
Doubtless an American politician, statesman, what you will, could
go into a political convention and signify his views with simple,
unpretentious common sense, but doubtless he never does.
Every community is cursed with a number of "orators"--men regarded as
"eloquent"--"silver tongued" men--fellows who to the common American
knack at brandishing the tongue add an exceptional felicity of
platitude, a captivating mastery of dog's-eared sentiment, a copious and
obedient vocabulary of eulogium, an iron insensibility to the ridiculous
and an infinite affinity to fools. These afflicting Chrysostoms are
always lying in wait for an "occasion" It matters not what it is: a
"reception" to some great man from abroad, a popular ceremony like the
laying of a corner-stone, the opening of a fair, the dedication of a
public building, an anniversary banquet of an ancient and honorable
order (they all belong to ancient and honorable orders) or a club
dinner--they all belong to clubs and pay dues. But it is in the
political convention that they come out particularly strong. By some
imperious tradition having the force of written law it is decreed that
in these absurd bodies of our fellow citizens no word of sense shall be
uttered from the platform; whatever is uttered in set speeches shall be
addressed to the meanest capacity present As a chain can be no stronger
than its weakest link, so nothing said by the speakers at a political
convention must be above the intellectual reach of the most pernicious
idiot having a seat and a vote. I don't know why it is so. It seems to
be thought that if he is not suitably entertained he will not attend, as
a delegate, the next convention.
Here are the opening sentences of the speech in which a man was once
nominated for Governor:
"Two years ago the Republican party in State and Nation marched to
imperial triumph. On every hilltop and mountain peak our beacons
blazed and we awakened the echoes of every valley with songs of our
rejoicings."
And so forth. Now, if I were asked to recast those sentences so that
they should conform to the simple truth and be inoffensive to good taste
I should say something like this:
"Two years ago the Republican party won a general election."
If there is any thing in this inflated rigmarole that is not adequately
expressed in my amended statement, what is it? As to eloquence it will
hardly be argued that nonsense, falsehood and metaphors which were
old when Rome was young are essential to that. The first man (in early
Greece) who spoke of awakening an echo did a felicitous thing. Was it
felicitous in the second? Is it felicitous now? As to that military
metaphor--the "marching" and so forth--its inventor was as great an ass
as any one of the incalculable multitude of his plagiarists. On this
matter hear the late Richard Grant White:
"Is it not time that we had done with the nauseous talk about campaigns,
and standard-bearers, and glorious victories (imperial triumphs) and
all the bloated army-bumming bombast which is so rife for the six months
preceding an election? To read almost any one of our political papers
during a canvass is enough to make one sick and sorry.... An election
has no manner of likeness to a campaign, or a battle. It is not even a
contest in which the stronger or more dexterous party is the winner; it
is a mere counting, in which the bare fact that one party is the more
numerous puts it in power if it will only come up and be counted; to
insure which a certain time is spent by each party in reviling and
belittling the candidates of its opponents and lauding its own; and
this is the canvass, at the likening of which to a campaign every honest
soldier might reasonably take offense."
But, after all, White was only "one o' them dam litery fellers," and I
dare say the original proponent of the military metaphor, away off
there in "the dark backward and abysm of time," knew a lot more about
practical politics than White ever did. And it is practical politics to
be an ass.
In withdrawing his own name from before a convention, a California
politician once made a purely military speech of which a single sample
passage is all that I shall allow myself the happiness to quote:
"I come before you today as a Republican of the Republican banner county
of this great State of ours. From snowy Shasta on the north to sunny
Diego on the south; from the west, where the waves of the Pacific look
upon our shores, to where the barriers of the great Sierras stand clad
in eternal snow, there is no more loyal county to the Republican party
in this State than the county from which I hail. [Applause, naturally.]
Its loyalty to the party has been tested on many fields of battle
[Anglice, in many elections] and it has never wavered in the contest
Wherever the fate of battle was trembling in the balance [Homer, and
since Homer, Tom, Dick and Harry] Alameda county stepped into the breach
and rescued the Republican party from defeat."
Translated into English this military mouthing would read somewhat like
this:
"I live in Alameda county, where the Republicans have uniformly outvoted
the Democrats."
The orators at the Democratic convention a week earlier were no better
and no different. Their rhetorical stock-in-trade was the same old
shop-worn figures of speech in which their predecessors have dealt for
ages, and in which their successors will traffic to the end of--well, to
the end of that imitative quality in the national character, which,
by its superior intensity, serves to distinguish us from the apes that
perish.