I am sorry to raise these issues but this book is intended to be truthful rather than diplomatic. If you expect to beat the machine politicians in the practical arts of democracy, you have got to be at least as democratic as they are. It is not necessary that you like any particular man nor group; it is necessary that you be friendly in manner and that you honestly treat all comers with fairness, tolerance, and decency. If you do have any strong prejudices against particular minorities you had better learn to guard most carefully against showing them, both in public and in private.
"A government should be run like a business."
This is a common saying and it is rather silly.
Look, citizen, a machine boss is a man who runs a government like a business. Is that what you want? A business is an organization run from the top down for the personal profit of the persons who run it. Businesses provide the public with something they want in return for money. Isn't that what a political machine does?
Our Constitution is quite explicit about the purposes for which we formed this government They are: " - to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty - " That's all. Nothing about making a profit, nothing about being "businesslike."
The methods of business are appropriate to the purpose of business; they are quite incompatible with the purposes of the Constitution. I do not mean to imply that a businessman cannot serve well in public office; I do mean that he had better not try to run things with the high hand with which he bossed his own business or the public will throw him out on his ear once they get wise to him.
It is quite true that some areas of government administration could stand more "businesslike" handling, but most attempts to tidy up government service to the public results in screams of anguish from any who are annoyed by the changes, without any compensating applause from those who are helped.
Take for example the new income tax form. It has been functionalized and made explicit, with all the turns clearly marked, to the point where a moron with a hangover can make out his own income tax return unless he is in the habit of keeping his business records in the bottom of his laundry bag. (Or unless he keeps two sets of books, one for tax purposes and one for his eyes alone!)
The thing that makes the new income tax form a marvel of bureaucratic genius is that the tax bill it defines with such graphic simplicity is a hodge-podge of second thoughts, blind guesses and compromises, resulting from the agonized efforts of officeholders of both parties to be reasonably fair to all hands while paying for the most expensive war in history.
Have you heard any applause for the result? Like fun! The mere mention of March 15 by a comedian produces sour laughter.28 The effort of figuring out the form is regularly portrayed as being more difficult than understanding Dr. Einstein's relativity.
Forget that notion about running a government like a business. A government should not be run for profit and a democratic government can't be run by a boss. And as for "businesslike" - are you sure you want it yourself? Do you want your home confiscated if you fall behind on a tax payment with the same speed with which a mortgage holder will foreclose if you fail to pay up, or a landlord will kick you out if you fail to pay rent - or do you prefer the present practice in which the government will stall around for years before putting your place up for auction?
By the way, why do people kick so much at having to stand in line in the post office, or the recorder's office, but are docile as little lambs when queued up in a bank? Is it because they expect service rather than a businesslike attitude from the government they own? Could be, maybe?
"Politicians are always compromising." This statement is quite true but the implication that the process is dishonest is so much balderdash. Compromise is the core of the democratic process. Without it there is no
democracy and can be no freedom. Compromise is the process by which we meet the other fellow halfway and agree on ajoint course of action not quite pleasing to either party. Every happily married couple is quite used to the system; if it is good at home, is it bad on Capitol Hill? The man who won't compromise is not a lily-white idealist; he is merely a conceited ass and undemocratic to boot.
We will discuss this further under techniques, particularly under "caucuses" and "primaries."
Civil Service versus Patronage. This subject is not nearly so much a matter of all black and all white as most people seem to think. Let us concede that civil service is a good idea in most public jobs below the policy-making level - if the regulations have been drawn with the intent of producing an honest, spoil-free service and if those regulations are honestly administered. Otherwise -and this applies to many cities, counties, and states-it is merely a dodge to entrench the henchmen of a machine in public jobs, beyond the reach of the electorate to "turn the rascals out!"30
The wrangle is generally managed through the device of an oral examination for applicants which counts as much, or nearly as much, as the written examination. If your local civil service makes use of an oral examination you are justified in assuming that it is crooked, a racket.
Nor is patronage, or the "spoils system," the benefit to practical politicians it is supposed to be. If a politician once gets started on the road of paying off political obligations with patronage, he quickly finds that there is never enough patronage to go around. Some of our senators meet this situation by becoming insatiable patronage hounds - one of them recently proposed a bill which would have made holding a job as a senior aeronautical engineer at Wright Field a matter of political faith! Others meet it by dropping the matter entirely, refusing to touch patronage, or by delegating it to the official local organization of their party.
Many officeholders have told me in private that the system of refusing to have anything to do with patronage is the only one which is free from headaches and unnecessary loss of votes.
The reason is very simple. For every patronage job there are at least a dozen candidates with good claims - in their own minds, at least - for appointment on the score of political services rendered. That means one man whose loyalty, such as it is, may have been purchased by the appointment - and eleven who are almost certainly antagonized.
After a few terms of this a congressman finds himself surrounded by a sea of disappointed postmaster candidates, each anxious to elect his opponent.
Still, if you are going to be in politics, you will have to face up to the problem of patronage. If you steadfastly refuse to accept it yourself, someday you will find that the job of dispensing it has been laid in your lap. What to do will be discussed under "techniques."
The federal civil service is almost entirely free from the dishonesty which is so prevalent in state and local civil service. It need not concern you too much as it is, by and large, well run and moderately efficient. It is not free from politics; federal civil servants maintain quite a lobby in Washington, but it is almost entirely free from partisan politics. Their efforts run mostly to pressure to obtain larger appropriations, higher salaries, and bigger organizations.31
Senator Byrd seems to feel that this is one of the most important problems facing the Republic. I don't happen to think so. You will have to decide for yourself.
The worst thing wrong with the federal civil service is the fact that the salaries and working conditions are not sufficiently high to attract enough competent men in the more responsible administrative positions - a section head in agronomy, let us say, or a division supervisor in aerodynamics research, or a chief physicist for the Bureau of Standards.