If you have these items in your possession you will seem almost omniscient to the lad and his parents. You can also pass out some good, non-political advice. All three schools are basically engineering schools. Therefore an applicant needs solid grounding in mathematics and physical science, plus one modern language. Make sure the kid knows this. All three schools have stringent physical requirements, and the applicant should find out at once whether or not he can meet them, or whether corrective measures will enable him to meet them. It is a sad thing to see a boy spend a couple of years trying for an appointment, then eat his heart out because some disqualifying disease in his past record prevents his accepting it when it comes along.
Don't use your political influence in connection with appointments to the service academies. It may not be dishonest, but itis certainly notin the public interest. Limit yourself to helpful advice and supplyinginformation.
I have dwelt at length on these service appointments because, first, you will be faced with the problem with certainty every year, and second, because I am advising you not to give the political help asked for. Since you are to refuse to basic request (for political influence) you should know specifically what you can do to be helpful to all comers. The matter is touchier than most requests for political favor because of the emotions stirred up by the parent-child relationship. It is easier and safer to turn down the father in a request for a job for himself than it is to refuse him help for his boy.
How to Tell a Trojan Horse from a Political Party:
In any city or town in which a well-entrenched machine has been in power without interruption for many years, the party of the political label opposite to the label worn by the Machine will also have a public organization, somewhat smaller, which regularly puts a ticket on the ballot, opposing the Machine, and with equal regularity gets beaten.
One will be the "Democratic" organization; the other will be the "Republican" organization. One of them will be the party in power and will be known as the "Machine." But it is almost a foregone conclusion that they are both the Machine.
It's a partnership. They get along fine together - except in public. Each year they put on a whoop-t'-do campaign, a grunt and groan match for the cash customers. They exchange insults, demand investigations, and hold rallies-but the fight is fixed, the results certain, and the take split two ways by arrangement.
In addition to these official organizations there will be unofficial organizations of each party, reform in nature, and probably unrecognized by their respective national committee. That makes four parties - or, more truthfully, three. The latter two are honestly opposed to each other and to the Machine. More confusing than amusing, isn't it? Well, take a glance at the multiple parties of some other countries; it will make you feel better.
The question is: What should the honest citizen do when faced with this situation?
It is a very real problem, for the "reform" wings of each party usually suffer from pernicious anemia. As for the official organizations, they are not the Republican and Democratic halves of the American Eagle; they are the twin wings of a turkey buzzard. For these reasons, the honest citizen in a machine-ridden community usually stays out of politics, and limits his participation to voting for the national ticket of his choice in the general elections.
But we'll never get out of the mud that way!
If you live in a machine-dominated city and if you entered politics by the direct routes suggested in Chapter II, you probably landed first off in the Machine, either main tent or sideshow. It hasn't hurt you, but you have cut your teeth and now is the time to strike out on your own. The six months or so that you spent with the Machine has taught you more than anything else could in the same length of time.
Move in on one of the two reform organizations, take it over, and, through it, capture the party of its affiliation in the primaries. Operation time: Six months to three years.
Use the party organization you have captured to turn the Machine out of power at the following city final election. Then do your darnedest to get a satisfactory governor, state attorney general and county prosecuting attorney at the next general election in order to tie down your victory.
Does it sound too hard? Remember what was said of the people who crossed the plains: "The cowards never started and the weaklings died on the way." Don't despair; you will not be alone. There will be others marching beside you. It is not too likely that you yourself will be called on to be the generalissimo of this war; you may find yourself a non-com or a junior officer.
But it can be done. I know it can be done because I have been present when it happened. Many American cities have carried offsuch reforms successfully; it is not too hard to do. The hard part is to make the reform stick. The ordinary reform organization falls to pieces after the first successful campaign and the ordinary reform candidate turns out to be a sorrier specimen in office than the Machine politician he displaced. The anatomy and pathology of reformers and reform organizations will be discussed in the chapter Footnotes on Democracy. Choosing a candidate will come up in the next chapter.
Many machine politicians are so sure that a reform group will hang itself that a lost election does not worry them. They take an off-year philosophically as a chance to clean out the dead wood and strengthen the organization. Much of the organization is secure through a phony civil service; die rest can live on its fat
You, presumably, have learned already that politics is a process that continues. You will not fall into the error of thinking that you need to plan for only one election. Let us consider then how you will choose your field of operations and what you will do.
Pick your medium on principle, not expediency, or you will never be happy. If you are a Republican in your national politics, if Republican party principles are what you believe in, then go into the Republican reform organization, even though the Democratic reform organization may seem to have the better chance of achieving your immediate purpose, defeat of a corrupt machine. Vice versa if you are a Democrat at heart
In some cities the local offices are "non-partisan" by law. This changes the labels but not the facts; a "non-partisan" city machine will always turn out to be owned by the leading politicians of one party, assisted by tame dogs who nominally carry the other party label. A "non-partisan" set up makes it a little easier to form a coalition to defeat a machine onc(e - and makes it much harder to preserve a reform once instituted, because a lack of organizational responsibility and lack of basic community or interests and belief among the coalitionists.
"Non-partisan" in local affairs was a bill of goods sold to the people of this country early in this century by a bunch of starry-eyed political theorists who were not semantically oriented and thereby confused symbols with facts. They saw the corrupt city machines - party machines - and figured out that they could do away with all that by outlawing political parties in local affairs. It was a cinch for the machine boys; the labels were abolished, but not the Machine! (I wonder why that didn't occur to the theorists?) It enabled the same old corruptionists to get away with murder without leaving finger prints around the corpse.