POLITICAL TECHNICIANS, CORRUPTERS OF DEMOCRACY
Spencer, Martin E.
Martin E. Spencer The roots of Watergate, I would maintain, are to be found in an antidemocratic philosophy carried by a new political type I shall call the "political technicians." Their...
...They are technicians who seek to "create opinion...
...They become his closest advisers, and they accompany him into the "corridors of power" if he is elected—e.g., Ehrlichmann, Haldeman, and Mitchell in the Nixon entourage...
...The upsurge of the reform movements in the Democratic party after the candidacies of Adlai Stevenson revealed the growing potency of "amateur" involvement in politics, and this tendency has increased...
...It is not that power should be fragmented but that it should be made responsible...
...Since the basic idea is that legitimacy lies in their manipulative wisdom, they conceive of law in a purely instrumental sense...
...Although many of the political technicians are lawyers (e.g., Mitchell, Ehrlichmann, Haldeman), their philosophy does not include a respect for law...
...There is no right to challenge, ferret and inquire, or criticize: in the technicist philosophy of government challenge and criticism are illegitimate and therefore merit punishment...
...It would eliminate the personal campaign organizations in which the technicians flourish, and it would require that the top political leadership of the nation be recruited from among the parliamentarians, i.e., men with training in the give-and-take of democratic politics...
...He tends to see politics as the mere manipulation of transient moods of mass sentiment and is therefore unable to understand the basic social and economic factors that underlie transformations of public opinion...
...In contemporary America it is considered the height of political sophistication to excoriate American democracy...
...But in the world view of the political technician the media have no rights against the state...
...They believe politics is campaign organization—that the public will can be shaped and controlled by organization—` `give me an apparatus and I will rule the world" might be their slogan...
...The candidate cannot rely on the party to secure his election—i.e., the party lacks the power to confer office...
...The philosophy of corporate life is transposed to the political arena and as in a corporate struggle the victorious faction takes over the company, so here the structure of government is thought to pass into the hands of the winners...
...There are of course significant differences among these types—but it is decisive that they all receive their political experience in the campaign and not as members of the regular party apparatus...
...For the political technician, the law can be bent or broken when it proves necessary...
...NOTEBOOK 191 WHAT THEN IS THE POLITICAL EXPERIENCE that shapes the world view of the technicians...
...So the modern politician campaigning for state or national office requires his own organization to raise funds, conduct the campaign, "get out the vote...
...Although the latter is by far the most striking case, it should be 192 NOTEBOOK remembered that Kennedy was the creator of "managed news," and Johnson honed to a fine art the presidential pastime of experimenting with images...
...He contrives "balanced tickets," secures advantages for his constituents, keeps his ear to the ground to discern distant swells of sentiment—for this is his political training...
...In its extreme form this attitude implies that the police and military departments of the state—the FBI, the CIA, the Army— become personal possessions of the executive to be used as he sees fit...
...HOW IS THIS SITUATION to be corrected, if it can be corrected at all...
...Such a system has its dangers, to be sure, as can be readily seen in the difficulties experienced by the West European nations presently suffering from "parliamentary cretinism...
...The structural conditions of American politics that breed the technicist outlook in the technicians has a similar impact on the men who run for office...
...This attitude was discernible in John Mitchell, a municipal bond lawyer who came to believe he was the fount of political wisdom after participating in Nixon's 1968 campaign...
...The personal campaign organization, dominated by the political technicians, has become a crucial factor in American politics...
...These experts—the political technicians—are not people of the regular party, and this is crucial in shaping their political philosophy...
...To pass quietly over Watergate is to certify the corruption that it represents...
...This means, simply, that the practicing politician learns to take into account and even to fear public opinion...
...One of the reasons for this state of affairs is the widely lamented decline of liberalism...
...Politics becomes a matter of "looking good...
...The political philosophy of these men is based, first of all, on the psychological impact of electoral success...
...He must gather funds, create a campaign organization, and he begins to feel that he creates his own victory...
...As concerns a structural response to the abuse of presidential power the answer may lie in a parliamentary system...
...What they overlook is the necessity of a strong state structure for dealing with the problems of a complex society...
...The Philosophy of the technicians sees the state as a possession of a ruling technicist elite...
...A parliamentary system demands strong and disciplined political parties—and this would go a long way to correcting the deficiences referred to above...
...Although I have emphasized structural conditions, note should also be taken of cultural and ideological conditions— especially of the fashionable cynicism over liberal ideals...
...Because of this myopia the political technician will, in the final analysis, always be surprised by events, no matter how skillfully he rides the rapids of public opinion...
...There was evidence of this attitude in the presidential behavior of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon...
...Flushed with victory, the political technician believes he is able to create power...
...If the government is seen as an instrument that exists to serve the people then it must justify any secrecy and the people must have access to knowledge about the state of society and government...
...Their experience is centered on an entirely different axis, that of manipulation...
...In every era of sharp partisanship the opponents of a particular Administration have appealed to classical liberal theory in order to impose institutional restraints on presidential power...
...It is my argument that the amateur standing or ideological persuasion of the political technicians is less significant in shaping their distinctive, manipulative outlook than their position in the personal campaign organization...
...Their emergence can be laid to the weaknesses and decline of the regular party machinery— a decline resulting from the effects of the Pendelton Act, which removed a source of patronage from the control of party bosses and added to the disruption of the big-city ethnic-labor coalitions that had provided the power base for the machines...
...Since the public is the object of control rather than the source of consent, a paternalistic policy of misrepresentation logically follows...
...In recent years the influx of ideologically motivated "amateurs" in political campaigns has emphasized the feebleness of the regular party machinery, which is caused in part by the altered conditions for electoral success in an age of mass politics dominated by the mass media...
...The thought that they have achieved office by their own efforts shapes their consciousness...
...The politician learns to scent and serve this opinion— that's how he stays in office...
...So the candidate is thrown back upon his personal resources...
...The conditions of mass politics—the appeal to an unseen audience by way of the media—require that he practice the public relations game of image manipulation...
...Here again the philosophy of the political technician is in exact opposition to the philosophy of liberal democracy...
...The basis of authority is the political technique and secret knowledge of the technicians that entitles them to manipulate the masses...
...This formula powered the old big-city machines in their halcyon days—they were the fount of favors, "loaves and fishes" generating political obligations harvested on election day...
...The political technicians have no such training and therefore are ignorant of democratic politics...
...Deceit and manipulation are not only acceptable but essential devices of government...
...This attitude is like that of a corporation lawyer who considers the law as an instrument to be used in the service of corporate goals...
...This widespread cynicism corrupts the vitality of liberal ideals, and it is consequently not surprising that political figures are less susceptible to their force...
...A government that accepts these ideals will also accept the adversary role of the press...
...He believes that policy is created by elites such as himself and is then "sold" to the masses...
...What is necessary is the vigorous reaffirmation of these ideals...
...And remember that the ordinary politician isn't a leader who can create a transcendent purpose out of public opinion...
...From the point of view of liberal democratic theory the media have both a right to inquire into the conduct of government and a responsibility to challenge the official version of events...
...This requires funds and the purchase of the talents of various media technicians who know how to package and "sell" a candidate—and the party organizations and party treasuries are insufficient for such campaigns...
...The loyalty of the political technicians adheres, not to a party or a principle, but to the leader in whose entourage they serve: they acquire power when their leader is elected to high office...
...As the candidate assembles his apparatus, he calls on these technicians...
...These men were corrupted, not by power, but by their philosophy of government and that philosophy was the product of their political experience, which in turn was shaped by the altered structure of American politics...
...As it develops, the political technician, who prides himself on his political astuteness and realism, grows unable to understand the nature of politics...
...A presidential system offers plebiscitary possibilities and therein lies its danger...
...The technicist world view has curious, ironic consequences for the perception of politics...
...This relationship generates an attitude of some respect toward the public—although this may seem a curious way of speaking about the attitudes of machine politicians and "party hacks...
...He views the public as an object of his craft, not as a source of consent, which is the basis of the philosophy of liberal democracy...
...The technicist philosophy has obvious implications for the straightforward, honest conduct of government...
...He may not set out to serve the "public interest," but he hastens to respond to interests that pressure him...
...An active press, in an adversary relationship with government, is the basic need of an "informed citizenry" that is the bedrock of liberal democracy...
...He requires the services of experts—public relations men, speech-writers, television directors, ad men, fund-raisers, and organizational technicians...
...Now these technicians indeed lack the experience of regular party activity...
...The media must therefore become an auxiliary of government and aid the political technicians to control public opinion...
...Only by the cultivation of moral outrage can these principles be maintained, and that is why those who have declaimed against the public concentration on Watergate are sorely off the mark...
...They have never run for office, have never cultivated the sense of responding to and serving a constituency...
...These political technicians may include pure organizational types, unconcerned with policy, and ideologues of the kind that accompanied George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy in their presidential campaigns...
...Beyond the local level, effective campaigning now requires access to the media, so the candidate can put forward his "image" among the electorate...
...Along with his technicist staff, he falls victim to the arrogance of the technicist world view...
...The "electorate" is an unpredictable, capricious monster to be placated with rewards...
...to demand the fullest public accounting of these events is to repair the damage to the fabric of civic morality...
...Institutional structural changes should aim at this end: that the conduct of politics in America breeds into its practitioners the ethos of liberal democracy and not the crypto-totalitarian creed of the political technicians...
...Given the different conditions of American politics, it may do better here...
...Party politics on the local level, especially the politics of machines, bends the politician into a bargaining posture toward his constituency, for the road to success requires that he render services in return for votes...
...I hold that an explanation of the Nixon presidency has little to do with the accidents of personality or with the "excessive growth" of presidential power...
...He thus comes to see himself as the source of politics...
...Every instance of abuse of power should be publicly condemned...
...He merely caters to this opinion while trying to extract the maximum personal advantage from office...
Vol. 22 • April 1975 • No. 2
