Editorial
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
"Editorial" As SOCIETIES GO, modern American society is a bit offbeat; in many ways it is not a society at all. Rather it is a vast snoozing herd whose insular members are constantly driven and abused by a...
...Mention such'qualities to any man on the street, and he will insist that you are describing a swindler, a gigolo, or an automobile salesman, but associate these qualities with a local candidate for dog catcher and he is immediately transformed into a successor to the Hon...
...We hear speeches that promise the world of the sugar plum fairy while bathing us in Mazola Oil...
...Consider the bogus ingredients which our political seers insist upon in their dynamic democratic leaders...
...Let us face the music...
...The recipe generally includes abundant portions of "sincerity," "boldness," "innovation," and a kind of public solicitude that takes on the character of neurosis...
...A congress vegetant with idiots like Bella Abzug and con artists like the Hon...
...In fact tomorrow will be much the same as today...
...The thought is obscene...
...One such question recently inflicted upon us all is the question of our future political leadership...
...Personally, I relish the spectacle...
...John Lindsay...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Nixon's White House is what we deserved, and the Hero of Chappaquiddick is our condign tomorrow...
...We see one great political party dominated by Teddy Kennedy and Carl Albert and another that gave itself over to the artistry of J. Walter Thompson...
...Does he pay taxes, and has he committed any indiscretions in his black four-door Oldsmobile 88 lately...
...As I see it, Americans can rest confident in the knowledge that for the foreseeable future the public trust generally will remain in the hands of the usual crowd of idiots and mountebanks...
...Let us steel ourselves to our condition...
...What is more, if your candidate can intone a few dithyrambs of toadying rhetoric and some utopian promises, he will be in danger of becoming presidential material...
...And can they do it when trendy ideology denies that individuals have a place in society, a place in the universe and a purpose in life...
...I take this to be a residue of our historic disrelish for pervasive government or perhaps a luxury indulged in by a people whose ancestors worked prodigies with democratic theory almost two centuries ago...
...Of course not...
...So it is that we behold sweating mobs of empty-headed American pols incessantly prattling about their unsurpassed compassion, sincerity, humanity, and solicitude for everything from the lowly Arapaho to the whooping crane...
...Ron Dellums is right and proper...
...It is the pallid but awful condition of American politics that of all the silly qualities which ingratiate a candidate to his constituency there is hardly a one that cannot be dissembled by the greenest performer of soap operas, almost all are drawn from the repertoire of the con man, and some are the instruments of the buffoon...
...Americans have little to fear...
...Where does he live, and now will he make himself known to us...
...He would not be elected...
...The only thing that astonishes me is that we do not have more Justice Siricas scowling from behind the bench...
...How could it go any other way...
...These questions are supposed to fill us with spasms of woe and get us thinking seriously about the constituent elements of leadership...but not too seriously...
...Oh it is true that many of the textbooks claim that candidates must possess a devotion to things like compromise, due process, and some sort of constitutional justice, but any office seeker who confected the wisdom of college government textbooks into his campaign would become either a laughingstock or a public nuisance...
...These and related questions curl the hairs of that tribe of Americans that is loosely referred to as the good government clique...
...so bring on the Kennedys, bring on the Angst, and bring on the beer...
...henceforth to be trotted out as a fundraising lure for crowds of good government's chumps...
...Imagine an American pol being recommended to the electorate for his sobriety, restraint, competence, and virtue, while campaigning on a platform that stressed moderate expectations...
...Now the question of America's future political leadership is a swampy one full of dangers, shrouded in uncertainties and reeking with Angst...
...In fact such a man did leave them so beshook just ten years ago, and his disastrous showing at the polls persuaded a whole generation of wisenheimers that if one ever wants to get anywhere in American life—at least in American political life—it behooves him to believe in nothing whatsoever or at least to be prudent enough not to admit to his beliefs...
...Imagine a candidate who actually had an idea—not a fine idea or even a genuine idea, but any kind of idea...
...Such claims are of course tommyrot, for the majority of Americanoes really only want to be left peacefully to bask in the gentle glow of their television sets...
...What is more, Americans really ought to gather themselves up into a society again...
...Who took his Spanish exam while he was at Harvard...
...Ever since that sad hour when old Abe's ghost staggered skyward, has any candidate anywhere in this vast nation of laws proclaimed or evinced ever so coyly the values of the Founding Fathers...
...He would be put into a museum or made an imperial wizard of Common Cause, Inc...
...When idiotic notions like the current enthusiasm for ethnic pride have such heady influence...
...The land that raised from the muck Fillmore, Harding, arid Kennedy will not deny itself a Richardson, a Mondale, or yet another Kennedy...
...Whom has the Deity ordained to lead our famed nation from its present drear...
...Can they do this when most of the power of government has been arrogated by the Washington mob...
...For from the way the good government clique sculpts its questions about leadership, the only answers that ever suggest themselves are at once self-serving and imbecilic, always conjuring up apparitions of a handsome busybody waving a magic wand over City Hall...
...Nevertheless the tribes continue to stir up their fellows with a string of gorgeously vexed questions which are rarely serious but which are guaranteed to addle that vestige of community still gasping for life in this great republic...
...Americans cannot digest even these vaporous qualities...
...Such a man would leave the ward heelers and the seers shaking their empty coconuts...
...I have cheerfully devoted to it a good deal of my time, and I am conscience-bound to admit that the answers are not nearly so apocalyptical as the good government clique would have us believe...
...But I fear it is now time for the great mass of Americans to rouse themselves to a serious consideration of their political system and of the hinds in charge...
...But then a system that had the good humor to hatch Earl Warren and William 0. Douglas should not be expected to bring forth many Cromwells or Cal ig ulas...
...When responsible involvement in local government is a distraction from the television and a distraction that seems to have no function...
...Rather it is a vast snoozing herd whose insular members are constantly driven and abused by a multitude of antagonistic tribes, furiously pursuing their own divers obsessions while insisting that their obsessions are the heart's delight of all Americans...
...Or imagine a candidate with the temerity actually to define himself according to a set of principles for which he holds some semblance of devotion...
...The long and the short of it is that Americans do not think seriously about democratic government...
Vol. 8 • October 1974 • No. 1
