The foregoing tales are essentially sagas o f power: how personal initiative fares against the entrenched interests o f a bureaucracy, the ways corporate wealth and clout battle challenges from the grassroots, and why industrial greed and bungling flourish. These are some o f the specific issues that characterize A merican politics in 1980. Below are selections from writings which we think offer some insights into the nature o f politics. In the five essays that follow, The Clinton St. Quarterly examines some o f the politics ’ more bizarre and astonishing aspects present and past, and we end up with a rather salutary offering for these times o f cynicism and despair. Browse with us now through the following pages and approach, i f you dare . . . Heart g f the Beast Plunkitt of Tammany Hall Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody thinks o f drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many o f our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I ’ve made a big fo r tune out o f the game, and I ’m gettin’ richer every day, but I ’ ve not gone in for dishonest graft — blackmailin ’ gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc. — and neither has any o f the men who have made big fortunes in politics. There’s an honest graft, and I ’m an example o f how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “ I seen my opportunities and I took ’em. ” Just let me explain by examples. My party’s in power in the city, and it ’s goin’ to undertake a lot o f public improvements. Well, I ’m tipped off, say, that they’re going to lay out a new park at a certain place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board o f this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular fo r before. A in ’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? O f course it is. Well, that’s honest graft. Or suppose ’ it ’s a new bridge they ’re goin ’ to build. I get tipped o f f and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank. Wouldn ’t you ? I t ’s just like lookin ’ ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. I t ’s honest graft, and I ’m lookin’ fo r it every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I ’ve got a good lot o f it, to o . . . . The city is repavin ’ a street I ’ve told you how I got rich by honest graft. Now, let me tell you that most politicians who are accused of robbin’ the city get rich the same way. They didn ’t steal a dollar jrom the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them. That is why, when a reform administration comes in and spends a half-million dollars in tryin ’ to find the public robberies they talked about in the campaign, they don’t find them. The books are always all rght. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. A ll the; can show is that the Tammany heads o f departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you that’s never goin’ to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn ’t isn’t likely to be popular. I f I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend Why shouldn’ t I do the same in public life? Another kind o f honest graft. Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers, but don’t you know that Tammany gains ten votes fo r every one it lost by salary raisin’ ? The Wall Street banker thinks it shameful to raise a department clerk’s salary from $1500 to $1800 a year, but every man who draws a salary himself says: “ That’s all right. I wish it was me. ” And he feels very much like votin’ the Tammany ticket on election day, just out o f sympathy. Tammany was beat in 1901 because the people were deceived into believin ’ that it worked dishonest graft. They didn’t draw a distinction between dishonest and honest graft, but they saw that some Tammany men grew rich, and supposed they had been robbin ’ the city treasury or levyin ’ blackmail on disorderly houses, or workin’ in with the gamblers and lawbreakers. As a matter o f policy, i f nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into such dirty business, when there is so much honest graft lyin ’ around when they are in power? Did you ever consider that? Now, in conclusion, I want to say that I don’t own a dishonest dollar. I f my worst enemy was given the job o f writin ’ my epitaph when I ’m gone, he couldn’t do more than write: “ George W. Plunkitt. He Seen His Opportunities, and He Took ’Em. ” — from Plunkitt o f Tammany Hall by William L. Riordon Island Holiday In The Suffrage o f Elvira, V.S. Naipaul examines the way in which democracy adapts to the very complex admixture of races and peoples in the back hills of Trinidad in 1950. The setting is an election campaign, Trinidad’s second excursion into electoral politics. Harbans, the candidate, owns the lorry which connects the Elvira district with the greater world and, though he lives elsewhere, he sees the election as a chance to move up a class, an investment o f sorts. To win, he has to piece together an alliance which includes Baksh, the tailor reputed to control the Muslim vote, Baksh’s son Foreman (“ Foam” ), the Hindu goldsmith and moneylender Chit- taranjan, and a host of allies and aides-de-camp. Harban’s rival, Preacher, a black man, is ably assisted by the young Hindu “ traitor,” Lorkhoor, whose efforts have unsettled Harbans’ early feeling that he is a shoe-in. So the money begins to flow and the politics game begins. “ Baksh, we really want a loudspeaker van?” “ To be frank, boss, I ain’t want it so much fo r the elections as fo r afterwards. Announcing at all sort o f things. Sports. Weddings. Funerals. It have a lot o f money in that nowadays, boss, especially fo r a poor man” — Baksh waved his hands about the room again — “ who ain’t got much in the way offurnishings, as you see. And Foam here could manage your whole campaign fo r eighty dollars a month. No hardship. ” Harbans accepted the loudspeaker van sorrowfully. He tried again. “ But Baksh, I ain’t want no campaign manager. ” Foam said, “ You ain’t want no Muslim vote. ” Harbans looked at Foam in surprise. Foam was tacking steadily, drawing out his needle high. Baksh said, “ I promise you the boy going to work night and day fo r you. ” And the Muslim leader kissed his crossed index fingers. “ Seventy dollars a month. ” “A ll right, boss. ” Foam said, “ Eh, I could talk for myself, you hear. Seventy-five. ” “ Ooh. Children, Baksh.” “ They is like that, boss. But the boy have a point. Make it seventy-five. ” Harbans hung his head. The formal negotiations were over. Easily the most important person in Elvira was Chittaranjan, the goldsmith. And there was no mystery why. He looked rich and was rich. He was an expensive goldsmith with a reputation that had spread beyond Elvira.. . . No wonder Foam, like nearly everyone else, Hindu, Muslim, Negro, thought and spoke o f his house as the Big House. As a Hindu Chittaranjan naturally had much influence among the Hindus o f Elvira; but he was more than the Hindu leader. He was the only man who carried weight with the Spaniards of Cordoba (it was said he lent them money); many Negroes liked him; Muslims didn’t trust him, but even they held him in respect. “ You ain’t have nothing to worry about, Mr. Harbans, ” Foam said, speaking as campaign manager, as he and Harbans drove through Elvira. “ Chittaranjan control at least five thousand votes. Add that to the thousand Muslim votes and you win, Mr. Harbans. It only have eight thousand voters in all. ” Even before the committee met, Foam set to work. He got a pot o f re? paint from Chittaranjan and went around Elvira painting culverts, telegraph pobs and tree-trunks with the enthusiastic slogan, VOTE HARBANS OR DIE! Mrs. Baksh didn’t like it at all. “ Nobody ain’t listening to me,” sht said. “ Everybody just washing their foo t and jumping in this democracy busines. But I promising you, for all the sweet it begin sweet, it going to end damn so.tr. ” She softened a little when the loudspeaker ard the van came, but she stillmade it clear that she didn’t approve.. .. After dinner that evening, Foam, with his 12-year-otd brother Rafiq, w?nt in the van to Cordoba, a good three miles away, to do some more slogans The Spaniards watched without interest while he daubed VOTE HARBANS ORDIE! The next evening he went to complete the job. The first three words o f his slogans had been covered over with whitewash and Cordoba was marked everywhere, in dripping red letters, DIE! DIE! DIE! “ That is Lorkhoor work, ” Foam said. Chittaranjan said, “And these white woman telling the Spanish that trey mustn ’t take no part in politics and the Spanish taking all what these woman say as a gospel. ” Chittaranjan sounded hurt. “ I telling you, it come as a big big pussonal blow, especially as I know the Spanish people so long. Look, 1 go to see old Edaglo, you know, Teresafather. The man is my good good friend. For years he eating my food, drinking my whisky, and borrowing my money. And now he tell me he ain’t voting. So I ask him, ‘ Why you ain’t voting, Edaglo?’ And he answer me back, man. He say, ‘Politics ain’t a divine thing. ’ Then he ask me, ‘ You know who start politics?’ You could imagine how that take rm back. ‘Somebody start politics?’ I say. He laugh in a mocking sorta way as though he know more than everybody else and say, ‘ You see how you ain’t know these little things. Is because you ain’t study enough. ’ He, Edaglo, talking like tnat to me, Chittaranjan! ‘Go home, ’ he say, ‘and study the Bible and you go rtad and see that the man who start politics was Nimrod. ’ ” “ Who is Nimrod?” Baksh asked. Pundit Dhaniram slapped his thigh again. “ Nimrod was a mighty hunter. ” They pondered this. Harbans was abstracted, disconsolate. Baksh said, “ What those women want is just man, you hear. The minute they get one good man, all this talk about mighty hunting gone with the wind. ” Dhaniram was pressing Chittaranjan: “ You didn’t tell them about Caesar? The things that are Caesar’s. Render unto Caesar. That sort of thing. ” Chittaranjan lifted his thin hands. “ Id o n ’t meddle too much in all that Christian bacchanal, you hear. And as I was leaving, he, Edaglo, called me back. Me, Chittaranjan. And he give me this green book. Let God be true. Tcha!” Mahadeo shook his head and clucked sympathetically. “ Old Edaglo really pee on you, Goldsmith. ” “Not only pee, ” Chittaranjan said. “ He shake it. ” And having made his confession, Chittaranjan gathered about him much o f his old dignity again. Then Harbans came. “ Pappa! Eh, but what happen to the old Dodge lorry?” Harbans had come in a brand-new blue-and-black Jaguar. “ Lorry! What happen to Harbans?” He wasn’t the candidate they knew. Gone was the informality o f dress, the loose trousers, the tie around the waist, the open shirt. He was in a double- breasted grey suit. The coat was a little too wide and a little too long; but that was the tailor’s fault. Harbans didn’t wave. He looked preoccupied, kept his eye on the ground, and when he hawked and spat in'the gutter, pulled out an ironed- handkerchief and wiped his lips — not wiped even, patted them — in the fussiest way. The people o f Elvira were hurt. He didn’t coo at anybody, didn’t look at anybody. Lie made his way silently through the silent crowd and sent straight up the steps into Chittaranjan’s drawing-room. The crowd watched him go up and then they heard him talking and they heard Ramlogan talking and laughing. They didn’t like it at all. — from The Suffrage o f Elvira by V.S. Naipaul 17
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