Tell him that he is so damned ignorant that he doesn't have any real opinions about politics and so lax in his civic duties that he wouldn't be entitled to opinions if he had any. Tell him to shut up and to quit holding up the bridge game.
The faint sound of cheering you will hear from the distance will be me. I don't like the jerk either, nor any of his tribe.
You may not believe that getting into politics is actually as simple as I have described it. Here is my own case: I returned to my own state after an extended absence. My profession had kept me travelling and it happened to be the first time I had ever been at home during a campaign. I walked into the local street headquarters of my party and said to a woman at a desk, "I have a telephone, an automobile, and a typewriter. What can I do?"
I was referred to another headquarters a couple of miles away - I was so ignorant that I did not know the district boundaries and had gotten into the wrong headquarters.
That very same day, to my utter amazement and confusion, I found myself in charge of seven precincts.
Six weeks later I was a director of die local club.
Six months later I was publishing, in my spare time, a political newspaper of two million circulation.
During the next campaign I was a county commit-teeman, a state committeeman, and a district chairman. Shortly after that campaign I was appointed county organizer for my party. And so on. It does not end. The scope and importance of the political work assigned to a volunteer fireman is limited only by his strength and his willingness to accept responsibility.
Nor is the work futile. The volunteer organization with which I presently became affiliated recalled a mayor, kicked out a district attorney, replaced the governor with one of our own choice, and completely changed the political complexion of one of the largest states - all within four years. I did not do it alone-naturally not, nothing is ever done alone in politics-but it was done by a comparatively small group of unpaid volunteers almost all of whom were as ignorant of politics at the start as I was.
Or let me tell you about Susie. Susie is a wonderful girl. She and her husband volunteered about the same time I did. Susie had a small baby; she packed him into a market basket, stuck him into the back of the family car and went out and did field work.
In the following four years Susie replaced a national committeeman with a candidate of her own choice, elected a congressman, and managed the major portion of the campaign which gave us a new governor. She topped her career finally by being the indispensable key person in nominating a presidential candidate of one of the two major parties. I'll tell more about that later; it's quite a story.
All this time Susie was having babies about every third year. She never accepted a cent for herself, but it became customary, after the house filled up, for the party to see to it that Susie had a maid during a campaign. The rest of the time she kept house, did the cooking, and reared her kids unassisted.
During the war she added riveting on bombers during the night shift to her other activities.
We can't all be Susies. But remember this - all that Susie had to offer was honesty, willingness, and an abiding faith in democracy. She had no money and has none now ... and she had no political connections nor experience when she started.
I could fill a whole book with case histories of people like Susie. Most of them are people of very limited income who are quite busy all day earning that income. One of the commonest excuses from the person who knows that he should take part in civic business is: "I would like to but I am just so tarnation busy making a living for my wife and kids that I can't spare the time, the money, nor the energy."
The middle class in Germany felt the same way; it brought them Hitler, the liquidation of their class, and the destruction of their country. The next time you feel like emulating them, remember Susie and her four kids. Or Gus. Gus drove a truck from four a.m. to noon each day; he had a wife and two kids. By sleeping in the afternoons and catching a nap after midnight he managed to devote many of his evenings to politics. In less than three years he was state chairman of the young people's club of his party and one of the top policy makers in the state organization.
What did he get out of it? Nothing, but the satisfaction of knowing that he had made his state a better place for his kids to live.
The Guses and the Susies in this country are the people who have preserved and are preserving our democracy - not the big city bosses, not the Washington officeholders, and most emphatically not your loud-mouthed and lazy brother-in-law.10
I have said that the rest of the book will tell only things that you will learn anyhow, through experience. They will be recounted in hopes of saving you much time, much bitter experience, and in the expectation that my own experiences may make you more effective more quickly than you otherwise might be. I also hope to brace you against the disappointment and sometimes disheartening disillusionments that are bound to come to anyone participating in this deadly serious game.
One warning I want to include right now, since you may not finish reading this book.
You are entering politics with the definite intention of treating it as a patriotic public service. You intend to pay your own way; you seek neither patronage nor cash. Almost at once you will be offered pay. You will turn it down. Again and again it will be offered and patronage as well.
There will come a day when you are offered pay to campaign for an issue or a man in whom you already believe and most heartily and to whom you are already committed. The offer will come from a man who is sincerely your friend and whom you know to be honest and patriotic. He will argue that the organization expects to pay for the work you are already doing and dial you might as well be paid. He honesdy prefers for you to be on the payroll; it makes the whole affair more orderly.
Everydiing he says is perfecdy true; it is honest pay, from a clean source, for honest work in which you believe. It happens doat just that moment a litde extra money would come in mighty handy. What should you do?
Don't take it!
If you take it, it is almost certain to mark die end of your climb toward the top in the policy-making councils of your party. You are likely to remain a two-bit, or at best a four-bit, ward heeler the rest of your life. A volunteer fireman need not have money to be influential in public affairs, but he must not accept money, even when it is clean money, honestly earned. If you take it you are a hired man and hired men carry very litde weight anywhere.11
There is a corny old story about a sugar daddy and a stylish and beautiful young society matron. The s.d. offered her five thousand dollars to spend a week at Atlantic City with him. After due consideration she accepted. He then offered her fifty dollars instead. In great indignation she said, "Sir, what kind of a woman do you think I am?"
"We settled that," he told her. "Now we're haggling over die price."
Don't make the mistake she did. There is however some sense in haggling over die conditions. If you reach die point where your party wants you to accept a state or national party post, for full-time work in a position of authority, or your government asks the same diing of you, under circumstances where it is evident that you must surrender your usual means of livelihood, go ahead and take it, if you honesdy believe that your services are needed and that you can do the best job that could be done by any of die available candidates. It is well understood in political circles diat public office or major party office is almost always badly underpaid for the talent and experience die jobs need. The salaries, therefore, are regarded simply as retainers to permit the holder to eat while serving die public. But don't be a paid ward heeler!