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 owe dues. But it is in a
political convention that they come out particularly strong. By some
imperious tradition having the force of unwritten 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 the next convention.
Here are the opening sentences of the speech in which a man was
recently 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 these 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 a fool
as any one of the incalculable multitude of his plagiarists.
In withdrawing his own name from before a convention, a Californian
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 to-day as a Republican of the Republican banner
county of this great state of ours. From snowy Shasta on the north
to sunny San 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.
Its loyalty to the party has been tested on many fields of battle and
it has never wavered in the contest. Wherever the fate of battle was
trembling in the balance 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 had been 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.