Political Promises

...It was Lenin who supplied that famous observation—that the bourgeoisie would sell the rope with which the Bolsheviks would hang them...

...the national media, the "grass roots" feelings, and the public opinion polls...

...Both Nixon and McGovern sought to short-circuit much of this system (though for opposed reasons...

...I don't always agree with Professor Polsby...

...While that may well be, Polsby quietly reminds us that the people and public policies so condemned—imperfect though they are —may be far preferable to the alternatives...

...It's not that Polsby has a radical reinterpretation to offer...

...Albert had been Majority Whip—responsible for informing the leadership on exactly how Democratic Congressmen would vote...

...In particular, given the wave of cynicism now abroad in the land, Polsby's assessment of Watergate—though written before Nixon's resignation—deserves to be quoted: "Legitimacy in our system proceeds not from electoral mandates alone, but also from the mutual accountability of political leaders...

...This is the essence of Solzhenitsyn's plea —that we do not, for the sake of a few dollars, sell our soul to the devil...

...Our honorary countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn declared in his moving address before the AFL-CIO that "The whole existence of [Soviet] slave owners from beginning to end has depended on Western economic assistance...

...we learn most not from those whose views echo ours, but from people who can explain why our own assumptions are sometimes wrong...

...And yet, there is also an ideological purpose in the Soviet eagerness for and facility with Western trade...

...Given the fact that Carl Albert, as Speaker of the House, has been "one heart-beat from the Presidency" during the two Vice-Presidential vacancies since 1972, the story of his election as Democratic Majority Leader in 1962 is not simply a trivial anecdote: the pattern which led to Albert's victory over Richard Bolling in the contest for the Majority Leadership (a position which normally leads to the Speakership) explains much about the way powerful figures in Congress become—and stay—powerful...

...Precisely because many educated Americans will disagree with Polsby, Political Promises should be widely—and sympathetically—read...

...we thereby rescue Communism, he suggests, from the internal seeds of its own destruction...

...By buying palladium and other rare metals from the Soviets, we do provide them with the hard currency to buy from other countries products which we might consider too dangerous to sell on our own to an enemy...

...For example, Polsby's discussion of extremism in recent American politics has the refreshing merit of comparing the McCarthyism of the 1950s with the SDS activism of the following decade...

...One essay in particular stands out in this book...

...he was the "liberal" candidate to replace his close friend Sam Rayburn, who died in November 1961...

...for many centuries, Russia's closest commercial and cultural ties were to Levantine and Central Asian peoples—peoples more adept in trading goods than in manufacturing them—and that uncanny Russian knack for negotiating the best possible deal reminds one of Bedouin traders at Arab bazaars...

...Some of Polsby's papers deal with national politics...

...When he originally argued that Muskie was the betting favorite in the 1972 Presidential campaign, I thought the calculation was based on some erroneous assumptions...

...Moreover, there is a strong moral argument against trading with the Soviets, just as there is a strong (though different) moral argument against trading with Rhodesia and South Africa...

...His collection of essays and reviews on American politics, collected in book form under the title Political Promises, is both instructive and enjoyable...

...It is not primarily a question of knowing why Albert won easily (Bolling dropped out of the contest when it became evident that he couldn't win...

...It may be that, faced with intractable economic crisis, ecological disaster, and foreign chaos, the traditional institutions of the American regime are incapable of responding fast enough and decisively enough...

...Or, as the saying goes, "politics ain't beanbag...

...If we're to understand the daily "news" heaped on us by the media, a refresher course in American politics is probably in order...

...When it comes to the essays that focus on Congress, however, these strengths make Polsby's analysis invaluable...

...George Meany has observed that by providing the Soviets with grain and technology we allow them to overcome the "disastrous consequences of totalitarian planning...

...we thus help relieve the regime of angry consumer demands...

...Albert used his extensive network of personal contacts, notably through a direct campaign of personally wiring and telephoning the membership of the House...

...For it is precisely because we Americans are so numerous, so diverse, and so liable to disagree that we must nurture with particular care a government whose leaders are subservient to law, hedged by custom, protected from arbitrary and impulsive acts by inner restraints and by institutionalized rules...

...There is considerable justification for these warnings and arguments...

...And since Polsby's early prediction in 1972 rested on his understanding that a majority of political elites and party regulars preferred a middle-of-the-road Democrat to Nixon, his mistake was an overestimation of the importance of the traditional forces in American politics—and not a misunderstanding of the attitudes of the politicians Political Promises by Nelson Polsby Oxford University Press $9.95 he knows so well...

...by Adam Meyerson The Public Policy For all its antipathy to capitalism, the Soviet regime has shown remarkable skill recently in trading on capitalist markets...

...And at a moment of American history when high-flown ideals and rhetoric have given way to general cynicism, perhaps Polsby's sober reflections are a healthy antidote to the mood swings generated by the mass media...

...It is conceivable that this "public trust" cannot be restored—and that in place of delicate institutions Polsby describes so well, we may see the emergence of a plebiscitary style based on mass manipulation in coming years...

...He will therefore come across as conservative—if not reactionary—to those who have felt that ideals have too little influence on our policy, and that our system has been too slow in responding to the crises of the 1960s and 1970s...

...Before dismissing him with such a label, however, we would do well at least to listen to what he has to say, if only because it is necessary to be reminded from time to time that we can't always have our own way in politics...

...He has the honesty to republish predictions that went wildly astray—notably those made early in the 1972 campaign...

...In both cases—as more recently with the excesses of Nixon staffers—considerable 32 The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1976 numbers of Americans thought that the checks and balances of our political system sheltered intolerable people and produced illegitimate public policies...

...For this reason, now that American agribusiness is again selling grain to the Trading with the Enemy Soviet Union, now that Occidental Petroleum is constructing a long ammonia pipeline through the Ukraine and other American firms are scrambling for similar contracts, there is a widespread fear—at least among those of us who still loathe totalitarian Communism—that by trading with the Soviets we are strengthening their regime and playing into their hands...

...In a day when journalists and the public at large have been mesmerized by Presidential politics, Polsby has taken the infinite pains to study and understand the complex ways in which our legislators actually function...

...Rather, this apparently minor event underlines the fundamental conflict between two arenas in contemporary American politics: the Washington political elite, with its caution, its traditions, and its highly personalized atmosphere...

...Bolling tried to generate a media campaign, and to pressure Democratic Congressmen through their home constituencies...

...Persons who value the proper working of American political institutions, and who see in their proper working a marvelous instrument of democratic self-government, are bound to view the unfolding events of Watergate with repugnance...

...By comparing Nixon's dismissal of Cox with Truman's dismissal of MacArthur, Polsby emphasizes the peculiar stance of the Nixon Presidency, its isolation from the Washington political elite, and its rejection of the prevailing American constitutional tradition of checks and balances...

...Few outsiders to the world of Capitol Hill can hope to approach Polsby's familiarity with the men, the tone, and the concerns of the American Congress, particularly the House of Representatives...

...assuch, Albert was in close touch with most of his colleagues, and widely admired as a person...

...That is one valuable lesson of Watergate...

...As a start I'd recommend that, instead of next Sunday's New York Times, you read Nelson Polsby's Political Promises...

...That Nixon was forced from office after having virtually declared war on both arenas is thus probably less significant, as a long range fact of American politics, than the tension between them...

...As a result, McGovern's string of primary victories—in part due to Muskie's bad strategy, which failed to take Polsby's advice for an early declaration of candidacy—permitted a relative outsider to dominate the Democratic convention and to campaign through the media rather than through the traditional pattern of party and interest-group influentials...

...In August 1973, when the Washington Post published a pair of articles on the pros and cons of impeachment, we were the authors on opposite sides...

...Solzhenitsyn opposes all trade with the Soviet Union: even if we supply goods and capital only for feeding, clothing, and housing the Soviet people, he contends, we strengthen totalitarian control and threaten our own freedom by freeing Soviet resources for the military and the police...

...unlike most intellectuals, Polsby is in close touch with those in Congress and the federal bureaucracy who make the system work from day to day...

...On rereading them with hindsight, however, the reasons for Polsby's overestimation of Muskie and his belief that Nixon might lose, are more understandable...

...Bolling was the favorite of the majority of journalists (some of whom openly endorsed him...

...In short, Carl Albert was, in the Democratic Party, the exact equivalent of Gerald Ford in the House GOP during Nixon's Presidency...

...Polsby obviously respects the "insiders" and the skills which permit them to survive and govern...

...If you regard a regime as incorrigibly wicked, then to trade with it is to nourish its wickedness...

...even so, a good plan is supposed to be able to take uncertainties into account...

...3 The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1976 33...

...But you don't have to agree with someone all the time to respect him...

...It is ironic in this connection that the Russian word for comrade, tovarishch, comes from the Turko-Tatar word for merchandise, and originally meant business or trading partner...

...But given the abuses of such a transformation of our system, informed Americans would do well to read—and think carefully—about the strength of "inner restraints and institutionalized rules" that have dominated what Polsby calls the "Washington subculture...

...The political process in America occurs not once every four years but continuously...

...By sell-ing grain to the Soviet Union we do permit the Politburo to escape admitting responsibility for shortages that result from an accumulation of disastrous economic policies (this year's grain shortfall of more than thirty percent is attributable as much to unpredicted bad weather as to bad policies...

...The conflict between Bolling and Albert in 1962 was therefore a typical conflict between what Polsby calls "inside" and "outside" strategies for gaining influence in Congress...

...And that Nixon's successor comes from the "club" known as the House of Representatives, rather than from the ranks of those whose primary political base is national prestige, reflects the impossibility of maintaining a political system in complete defiance of those who dominate the "inside" life of Washington...

...Quite the contrary, he is a careful and down-to-earth observer of the way things are...

...But before coming to such a revolutionary conclusion—which would surely lead to a form of monarchy (as has so often occurred in earlier republics, such as the Rome of antiquity or Renaissance Florence)—we would do well to ponder the arguments in favor of our own traditions...

...Polsby's study of the process is far more significant than many other, more visible events in American politics...

...By selling the Soviets machine tools for their new Kama River truck factory, we do bolster their transportation system, hence their economy, and hence their military preparedness...

...In other words, the very familiarity with the working of the American system —which makes Polsby so generally informative and enlightening—had its drawbacks in his early predictions of the 1972 campaign...

...Indeed, to anyone who has observed Soviet shrewdness in buying American grain futures or in playing foreign investors off against each other it might seem that the Communists are better capitalists than the capitalists...

...As he showed even before the resignation, therefore, it was in Nixon's first term—long before the cover-up—that the fundamental errors were made...

...That is the public trust that has evidently been so abused and which must be restored...

...Polsby's perspective is, of course, not the only one that deserves consideration...

...The first essay in this book, written well before Nixon's resignation, places the Watergate crisis in its historical perspective—and in so doing, reminds us that the so-called trial by the media was far less significant than we have been led to believe...

...This success is probably more a function of national character than of ideology...