Augean Stables

...In this respect, it resembles love and war, those other celebrated human endeavors where all is fair...

...If your opponent calls your shot out though you saw it clearly on the line, you do not-as a good sport-protest...

...Without getting too deeply into the case for party realignment, it is necessary-against the background of Felknor's theme-to query whether or not much of the dirt in American politics does not stem from the very fact that our national parties are, programmatically, so flimsy in character...

...This question provokes an answering question: "What moves honest men to stay in anything-law, salesmanship, advertising, radio and TV, newspaper writing, campus covin, or even business and unionism...

...In his study of the microcosm-campaign tactics- he unwittingly provides insight into the cultural macrocosm...

...he merely murders with a smile...

...Felknor spreads out a smorgasbord of electoral sins, many apparently drawn from his own files...

...He cautions against them as would-be crusaders who do not count the numbers of dead heathen since the latter have fallen from grace and do not deserve being spared...

...At one point the author cries out, "One may be forgiven for wondering what moves honest men to stay in politics...

...Bruce Felknor's purview during his decade of service as executive director of the Committee for Fair Campaign Practices, was limited to "dirty campaigning" -a less jazzy title-and never reached into the equally noisome realm of post-election immoralities...

...Wary of the super-moralist in politics, he knows that there are no more filthy fighters than the pure in heart, so sure of their inner incorruptibility that they never hesitate to employ even the dirtiest devices for noble ends...

...Whether party realignment-or any of the several reforms offered by Felknor-will really clean politics is open to question...

...they will be amused rather than aroused...

...Felknor was badly singed in that incident as a result of a "confidential" letter he sent to Kennedy that, through a series of sloppy mishaps, ended up on the pages of the New York Herald Tribune...

...Felknor is aware that he is not confronted with the moral lapses of individual candidates but with a deeply embedded set of folkways...

...The misadventure almost exploded the Committee, with demands for Felknor's firing, resignations from the Committee, apologies, and a general brouhaha...

...After all, politics is not confined to the election of public officers...

...A shift of focus from the "person" to the "party" might go far toward lifting campaigns to the level of program...

...Some will see in it an entertaining assortment of anecdotes...

...The big point in Felknor's book is never stated...

...His Committee has been a self-anointed court of appeals for candidates who felt that they were being unduly maligned by their opponents...

...They have brought, along with their scrubbed and innocent appearance, doctorates in law, political science, public administration and economics -and an emotionless neutrality toward moral considerations in politics.' The old-time smear artist is being replaced by this "new wave of amoral political technicians, who are clever, indefatigable, poisonous, and brilliant...

...Politics" is at the very core of our societal carousel, as man manipulates for the choicest seat and the best chance for grabbing the golden ring...

...Excepting this rare moment of righteous wrath, Felknor eschews such outbursts...

...This injunction against self-righteousness flows, again, from Felk-nor's experiences-in this case, with extremists...

...Reformers will turn to the last chapter for its suggestions on how to curb malpractices...

...In a campaign, one wars against the enemy and one makes love to the electorate...

...After all, campaigning is just one little corner of the society and is not likely to rise very much above the regnant mores...

...In this very readable little volume, he serves up his choice morsels of meanness, as inside info, as insight into political mores, as incitement to action, and-one suspects-as apologia pro vita sua, for self and for the Fair Campaign Practices Committee...

...Politics does, it must be admitted, carry its own ugly ambience around with it...

...Here Felknor departs from his primary subject-dirty politics-to engage in a debate on the much wider issue of the nature of political parties...

...This fear of extremism leads Felknor into strong advocacy of a two-party system wherein both parties are, internally, a consensus that broadly reflects the nation...

...Indeed, suggests Felknor, one of the "most badly needed" reforms is the "will to cease imputing evil to one's fellow-men and saintliness to oneself...

...Where the man per se is important, voters get involved in questions as to whether his sister is a "thespian," whether he is a "homo-sapiens," and whether-when he went to college-he was not a member of that Marxist faction known as the "anti-Communists...

...Enemies of Robert F. Kennedy will find solace in one chapter that recounts the flareup in the Committee over a Kennedy-Keating encounter in the New York senatorial campaign of 1964...

...Political pros will find it a bag of tricks...

...Standing by the old system of the "consensus" party, he appears in this encounter to be opposed to the idea of party realignment along ideological lines and party responsibility along organizational lines...

...Apparently, the Committee has seen too much and Felknor understands too much for him to assume that a great decree or thundering denunciation will clean the Augean stables...

...In the U.S., where both major parties have traditionally tried to look as much alike as possible, there has been a great tendency to play up the man-his face, parentage, race or religion, sex life or lack of it...

...Instead, you wait your turn to do the same to him, safe in the knowledge that, as a gentleman, he too dare not protest...

...Thus, the author assures us, RFK's weakness was his trust in his staff...

...All these little apples do not fall far from the societal tree...

...they will find proposals on control of campaign finances, on political libel, on fair radio-TV time, on labelling literature...

...The main fire in this chapter is not directed against RFK but against his technicians...

...Indeed, the real villain of this book is the new breed of campaign technicians who murder by innuendo and subliminal suggestion...

...they will be better armed to murder an enemy...

...It is easier to assume," writes Felknor, "that his [RFK's] loyalty downward to his staff is unquestioning than it is to ascribe to him the monumental falsity required...

...In countries where parties stand for ideologies, the voter casts his vote less for the man than for the party, less for personality than for principle...

...Hence, everything goes...

...Readers will draw from this debonair inventory of peccadillos pretty much what they want...

...Politics is also a gentlemen's game-like tennis when played by good sports...

...In the course of a decade, Felknor's office inevitably accumulated one of the world's best collections of memorabilia on campaign crimes...

...Although Felknor is obviously a reformer dedicated to establishing morality in campaign methodology, the tone of the book is rarely self-righteous...

...Curiously, although the book is full of names, dates and places, not a single one of these cool killers is identified...

...Thus when the smoothie enters politics, he does not howl at chicanery...

...This is one of the chapters that breathes indignation and may have been the real emotional reason for the book...