The Politics of Virtue, or, the New Tammany

...There is almost no working-class support—possibly because no one considers himself working class except the Puerto Ricans and the Negroes and they have little relation to the reform movement...

...How can a middle class reformer who is agitating for the abolition of patronage sit down for a discussion with Adam Clayton Powell who says "we want one out of every three jobs...

...One could go through the neighborhoods where reform clubs exist and point to the improvements—new traffic lights put up, street widenings stopped, even, in one case, a Title I project stymied by exposure of scandal during a hard-fought primary...

...Reform clubs have had a beneficial effect on some neighborhoods simply by providing a political opposition to the old-line Tammany Club...

...The Tammany spirit is to get power by all means, fair or foul, and to use it to get at the spoils...

...I A lion's share of the publicity and a substantial amount of the money used in the local district campaigns against DeSapio and his old-line supporters comes from a nationally oriented group known as the "liberal fat cats...

...In fact, the influx of the Negro and Puerto Rican populations and the dwindling of the middle class among whom there is some feeling that political activity is a moral obligation may make the whole reform idea academic within a few years...

...In a one-party city like New York, the "pros" are able to make a tidy living by selling special privileges to special interests...

...It is a way of taking over the machinery of government for the benefit of those who make a living by working at it 365 days a year, in other words, the "pros...

...These persons, high up in business, the communications industry and corporation law firms, were important supporters of Stevenson in his two presidential campaigns...

...The Liberal Party has good reason to snipe at the reform Democrats since many Liberal rank and file members have left to join the apparently more lively Democrats...

...And in a city so large and with a governmental structure so complex, the devices for covering up corruption by making the processes of government totally confusing are unlimited...

...A new generation of "reform" real estate men are inheriting Title I goodies...

...Wherever enough middle class college graduates can be found to fill a New York meeting hall, there have sprung up Democratic political clubs bearing the label "reform...

...The incentives to corruption in a city as wealthy as New York are enormous...

...For some a political club is a health station to dispense polio shots (a continuation of the service offered by Tammany clubs to their districts), for others it is a group therapy session where everyone gets a chance to "express himself," a friendship or a Golden Age Club...

...In the best Stevensonian tradition, however, they hardly recognize the joust as a struggle for power...

...Prior to Buffalo the older reformers had considered it okay to do business with DeSapio...

...It is they who most often make an effort to send their children to private schools or to move to the suburbs, rather than fight back as any self-respecting minority might...

...Afterward, however, the Tammany boss became the chief target of the local clubs, newly inspired by the ancient liberal stalwarts...

...issues they will fall apart...

...High jobs in Washington and in New York City have been handed out or are in the offing for the top "reformers...

...11 In the local reform clubs no clear-cut decision has been made as to the purpose of a political club...

...While this is unfortunate for the future of local government, it clearly suits the top level leaders of the movement who are playing for much higher stakes...

...Previous reforms of Tammany (there have been several) have vanished into the footnotes of history books...

...it is a state of mind...

...The mountain has labored and has already brought forth a small number of very nice mice...

...certainly Governor Lehman had found no fault with him...

...Many of these clubs were originally founded as local campaign headquarters for Adlai Stevenson because the "regular" organization was cool to his candidacy...

...The great error into which middle-class reformers have fallen is the belief that Tammany is really a Hall, and that all "us good guys" have to do is take it over...

...But it was only after the 1958 State Convention, where Tammany leader Carmine DeSapio affronted liberal Democrats like Mrs...

...The "reform" movement calls itself an effort "to revitalize the Democratic Party...

...And indeed the PR men and the lawyers quite frequently get their business from the "enlightened" real estate men...

...Engel, "We believe that our party must be in a position to attract to its standard all who are concerned with good government (italics ours...

...And under the guise of "reform," good local government under Fusion, the only method by which New York City has achieved a good administration, has been effectively blocked...

...One reformer has argued that "a conscious decision has been made to win control of the machine first, before there is any discussion of program...

...The club members were also attracted by Stevenson, but even more by the glamor of jousting with the forces of evil—embodied in the Tammany Tiger...

...In the clubhouses, of course, the middle class professionals are socially akin to the "enlightened" real estate men many of whom have also become "reformers...

...The Village, partly because of its unique political situation as DeSapio's home district, has also managed to obtain a special zoning amendment to preserve the character of its side streets, and no real estate speculator dared raise his head in opposition...

...Its chief spokesman, other than the ancient "Big Three" of Lehman, Roosevelt and Finletter, is a 68-year-old real estate lawyer named Irving Engel...

...The Democratic reformers have been notably unsuccessful, however, in maintaining any meaningful contact with the ever-increasing Negro and Puerto-Rican populations...

...Such members find themselves constantly confronted by fait accompli—including, perhaps, a vote in the Tammany Executive Committee for Carmine DeSapio by their club's leaders...

...Engel deals in "high-level" gibberish designed to enthuse and confuse the new people the reform movement hopes to attract to the Democratic Party...

...Governor Lehman has managed to hold the lid on the city-wide reform movement, despite vigorous rank-and-file protests, in order to give the lackluster administration of Mayor Robert P. Wagner a "reform" label...

...One might go further and say that the middle class reformers lack not only a passion for social reform...

...What he meant was that so much meeting time was taken up with procedural questions, reforms of party rules, the pros and cons of patronage, all discussed on a high moral plane, that the issues which really concerned him were hardly ever discussed...

...A person who has gone into politics because he learned somewhere, from his local Chamber of Commerce, school or church, that it is one's civic duty to participate, often finds that his activity in the reform club is leading to none of the ends he thought he had entered politics to achieve...

...While these ethnic groups do not quite fit into the old Christmas basket category (today they want something less patronizing: e.g., a slice of the patronage pie), their concept of politics is conditioned by their economic circumstances...

...The chances are that the great crusade would rapidly dwindle into the New Tammany...

...Engel goes on to say that the Democratic Party "must shake off the image and actuality of bossism and regain public confidence through its presentation of vigorous and progressive candidates and its advocacy of thoughtful and effective programs...

...It is perhaps not surprising since so few members of the reform clubs are anything but middle class: public relations and law are the dominating professions in the clubs...

...Most of the young Democratic reformers lack any real passion for social reform...

...It would seem, for example, that discussions between former Police Commissioner Francis Adams of the top level of reformers and Mrs...

...Eleanor Roosevelt would become somewhat sticky if they were include Adams's passion for fingerprinting school teachers...

...Besides their national aspirations, the men at the top have local business interests which are often in conflict with the need for better schools and housing...

...In some measure they succeeded—at least in making the Tammany leader a nationally controversial figure and in bringing home to him that his troubles stemmed from ignoring their advice at Buffalo...

...If the top level leaders desert the movement, perhaps to take patronage positions in the Kennedy administration, Tammany may well be left intact, except for the "new look" given it by the admission of a few young leaders in Brooks Brothers suits...

...What these programs are, and, indeed, where these candidates are, Mr...

...can have little taste for meetings on party structure which proceed heatedly until one or two in the morning...

...Perhaps if it gets to be known what a snap this manufacture of 'Democracies' is, all the greengoods men, the bunco-steerers, and the young Napoleons of finance will go into it and the public will be humbugged more than it has been...

...And just here it strikes me that it might not be wise to publish what I've said...

...One reform leader in Manhattan, already taken over and in by a Tammanyite turned self-styled reformer, was overheard mumbling as he disappeared into the jaws of the Tiger, "How like a Dostoevsky novel...

...Engel has so far failed to say...

...Engel boasted, are mere political hogwash...

...There is, then, an absence in the reform movement of a mature civic idealism...

...On this point, Liberal Party leaders have pointed out that "These people don't know what they want once they start discussing...

...For example, it is unlikely that Carmine DeSapio would ever have used his great power to oppose Robert Moses's plans for a superhighway through Washington Square Park if he had not been put in political jeopardy by the Village Independent Democrats...

...Behind the scenes, of course, a certain amount of trading between the "reformers" and DeSapio continued...

...Today, many regular Demo cratic clubs are nervous about making political fixes which their local opposition might find out about and use in the next primary...

...Or as Tammany seer George Washington Plunkitt once mused: "The only reason I can imagine why more men don't go into this industry is because they don't know about it...

...It appears that the top level of the reform group is already reaping the rewards it sought through a little anti-Tammany troublemaking: e.g., the rich liberals have managed to advertise to future DeSapios that some attention must be paid to them—or else...

...Before the 1960 Los Angeles Democratic convention, they fought desperately to undercut the national influence DeSapio would have had as Democratic National Committeeman...

...The question all reformers must face, therefore, is not whether they will take over Tammany but whether Tammany will take them over...

...In politi cal controversy, it appears, there is benefit for the average citizen...

...The party organization must regain its former health and dynamism [Is this what Tammany had?]: if it is to play a successful role in critical elections...

...Not at all...

...At this writing it appears that the "liberal fat cats" at the top of the reform movement have effectively prevented the reform movement from going too far...

...Eleanor Roosevelt and former Governor Herbert Lehman by rejecting their candidate for U. S. Senator, that the "movement" took on some militancy...

...A Puerto Rican hotel worker who has to get up at 6:00 A.M...

...And, in fact, the new clubs have had little to say about housing, schools, the problems facing narcotics addicts and so forth...

...Without an ideology to contend with that is rooted in neighborhood and city-wide problems, all these men have to do when they have achieved their own ends is to take away the money, the respectability, and the glamor of national publicity...

...The "fat cats" are largely centered in Manhattan's Silk Stocking District dominated by the Lexington Democratic -Club...

...Mr...

...After a few skirmishes with the leadership, they lose interest and take off for civic organizations or church groups where they probably belong in the first place...

...The young people in the district clubs do not entirely share the aims of the men on the top level of the reform movement...

...Says Mr...

...For still others it is a town meeting where forums are held on the issues of the day—most often on issues which have little to do with the city or the neighborhood—or a civic organization where one can work for some abstract notion of "good government...

...Finally, there may be one unfortunate consequence of the reform movement: this burst of energetic but thus far unsuccessful activity in the Democratic Party may well give Tammany Hall a patina of respectability and actually help get it past the next mayoralty election...

...but also a passion for self-preservation— that is, as residents of the city...

...It is clear that the "vigorous and progressive candidates" and "the thoughtful and effective programs" of which Mr...

...If some of the busy and anxious participants were to discover that their "reform" clubhouses were simply more modern versions of the old Tammany clubhouses, cogs in a larger machine known as "The Organization," there would be a falling away overnight of some of the more idealistic activists...

...It is the middle classes in New York who are essentially unrepresented...

...In some of the so-called "reform" clubs in Manhattan, the business of getting rid of the "troublemakers" is already well in hand...

...III All this is not to say that the Democratic reform movement has been a waste of time...

...It is the middle classes in the city for whom the housing shortage is becoming increasingly desperate because they have allowed themselves to be persuaded that government subsidies for them are not "liberal" (a term which they find respectable), but really quite "radical...

...But Tammany, as history shows, is not a hall...

...To those who are active for a simpler reason, that is, selfadvancement in the political world, the problem is merely how to retain the "reform" facade while getting rid of all the busybodies who insist on becoming involved in the club's decision-making...

...For each member or voter in the district, the club means something different...

...One ex-member of the Village Independent Democrats, a clubhouse that directly faces Carmine DeSapio's own Tamawa Club, recently referred to the reform club in the following terms: "There are so many people on white horses up there that you have to kick away the manure to get into the place...