America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (50 page)

A national dream need not, indeed may not be clear-cut and exact. Consider the dream of France, based on a memory and fired in the furnace of defeat and occupation, followed by the frustration of a many-branched crossroads until Charles-le-plus-Magne polished up the old word “glory” and made it shine. La Gloire brightened French eyes; defensive arrogance hardened and even the philosophically hopeless were glorious and possessive in their hopelessness, and the dark deposits of centuries were washed from the glorious buildings in Paris. When this inspired people looked for examples of glory they remembered the Sun King, who left them bankrupt, and the Emperor Napoleon, whose legacy was defeat and semi-anarchy; but glory was in both men and both times—and France needed it, for glory is a little like dignity: only those who do not have it feel the need for it.

For Americans too the wide and general dream has a name. It is called “the American Way of Life.” No one can define it or point to any one person or group who lives it, but it is very real nevertheless, perhaps more real than that equally remote dream the Russians call Communism. These dreams describe our vague yearnings toward what we wish we were and hope we may be: wise, just, compassionate, and noble. The fact that we have this dream at all is perhaps an indication of its possibility.

OUR MEANS of governing ourselves, while it doubtless derives from European and Asiatic sources, nevertheless is not only unique and a mystery to non-Americans but a matter of wonder to Americans themselves. That it works at all is astonishing, and that it works well is a matter for complete amazement. Americans' attitude toward their government is a mixture perhaps best expressed by the phrase “the American Way of Life” followed by “Go fight City Hall.” In our thinking about conferring the blessings of our system on other people we forget that ours is the product of our own history, which has not been duplicated anywhere else in the world. We have amassed a set of prejudices and feelings which doubtless grew out of one time or fact in our background, but which are just as strongly held when we do not know that background.

For example, Americans almost without exception have a fear and a hatred of any perpetuation of power—political, religious, or bureaucratic. Whether this anxiety stems from what amounts to a folk memory of our own revolution against the England of George III, or whether in the family background of all Americans from all parts of the world there is an alert memory of the foreign tyrannies which were the cause of their coming here in the first place, it is hard to say. Perhaps it is a combination of both; but, whatever its source, it is a very real thing. An obvious concentration of power or an official with a power potential causes in Americans first a restiveness, then suspicion, and finally—if the official remains in office too long—a downright general animosity; and this happens whether or not the officer in question is ambitious. Many a public servant has been voted out of office for no other reason than that he has been in too long. In President Roosevelt's third and fourth terms, many people who had been his passionate partisans were turned against him by pure uneasiness over the perpetuation of power. On the crest of this feeling it was easy to put through a law limiting the Presidency to two terms—a law which soon after embarrassed its Republican proponents, who would have liked to keep President Eisenhower in office indefinitely for no other reason than that he could win.

It is our national conviction that politics is a dirty, tricky, and dishonest pursuit and that all politicians are crooks. The reason for this attitude is fairly obvious—we have had cynical and dishonest officials on all levels of our government. When their practices have been exposed, it has been with pyrotechnical publicity which has dazzled us to blindness toward the great number of faithful, honest, and efficient political men who make our system workable. When Adlai Stevenson was asked why he had gone into politics he replied that he wanted to raise the threshold and perhaps to give politics a better name, so that it could be a decent and honorable profession, thereby leading our best citizens to participate. But we have had over the years every reason to be suspicious of politicians. Such is the ruggedness of the path to election—the violence, the charges, the japes and hurtful tricks—that it takes a special kind of man to run for public office, a man with armored skin and a practical knowledge of gutter fighting. And this is true on every level, from village school board to the Presidency of the nation. It is little wonder that shy and sensitive men, no matter what their qualifications, are repelled. Such men will accept appointment when they shrink from election.

In the short history of our nation—190 years—we have managed to accumulate customs inviolable, deep-seated, and below the inspection level. One such fiesta is the nominating convention at which political parties decide on the candidates for President and Vice-President. The ritual of these conventions is binding, the prayers endless, the committees appointed to conduct so-and-so to the rostrum large and complacent. The nominating speeches are like litanies in their faithful orthodoxy. Then, after each contestant's name is put in nomination, the roof comes off; there are parades, marches, costumes, banners, posters, noisemakers. A pandemonium of enthusiasm rips the air and destroys eardrums and vocal cords. It is a veritable volcano of enthusiasm, and it is in no way lessened or abated by the generally known fact that the spontaneous eruption is rehearsed, bought, and paid for, and that the same celebrants will in half an hour change their hats and posters and explode in favor of another contestant; and the odd thing is that, although the technique is cut and dried, the enthusiasm is genuine.

The business of these conventions could be concluded in a very short time, but it is not. For four or five days it continues, with parties, celebrations at night, with great drinking affairs and every kind of excess known to the American away from home. The reason for the duration is obvious but no longer valid: when the first conventions met, most of the delegates had to ride on horseback for days or even weeks to get to the convention city, and those hard-riding delegates were not content to cast their votes and mount their horses and go home; they wanted some fun too; and they still do, even though they arrive by airplane.

Once the nominations are completed, the campaigns for election begin—hurtful, libelous, nasty, murderous affairs, wherein motives are muddied, names and reputations beshitten, families tarred and tawdried, friends and associates mocked, charged, and clobbered. This, of course, for the opposition. At the same time, one's own candidate becomes saintly in character, solonic in statesmanship, heroic in war, humble toward the poor and weak, implacable toward wrongdoers, a sweet and obedient son to his mother, grateful to his first-grade teacher who taught him everything he knows. The ideal candidate leaps toward the bright and beckoning future, while his feet are firmly planted in the golden past. He worships children, venerates his parents, and creates an image of his wife that is part mother, part friend, part goddess—but never bed-mate. In fact, the rules of nonsense are suspended during a Presidential election, as well as memories of honesty and codes of decency. I remember in Chicago, when Governor Stevenson had been nominated for the Presidency, his first demand was for an open convention for the nomination of a Vice-Presidential candidate. This suggestion shocked Mr. Sam Rayburn clear through, but he soon recovered and went to work on Stevenson to prove to him that an open or uncontrolled convention was disaster. Governor Stevenson held firm, and the argument went well into the night, and when it got through to Mr. Sam that there would be no capitulation, he said with a sad, wise kindness, “Look, son—look, Governor—I'm an old man, and I've been through this for many years, and I tell you I don't mind an open convention—as long as it's rigged!”

I have observed our politics as practiced in village and city wards, in county, in state, and in nation; and it is just as crazy and just as venal as I have suggested. How does it happen, then, that what emerges is a government more stable, more responsible, more permanent, trustworthy, and respected than any other in the world? It is another of our paradoxes. In this we are lucky—watched over by a kindly and humorous deity—or there is something inherent in our system which protects us from ourselves. Our large, rich slice of the earth has survived even our efforts to strip it bare. History treated us kindly in the days of our national infancy; predatory countries, which might have wiped us out, had other business while we were learning the lessons of nationhood. In fact, we find our history strewn with good fortune. Our nation was designed by a group of men ahead of their time and in some ways ahead of ours. They conceived a system capable of renewing itself to meet changing conditions, an instrument at once flexible and firm. We constantly rediscover the excellence of the architecture of our government. It has been proof not only against foreign attack but against our own stupidities, which are sometimes more dangerous.

In reviewing our blessings we must pay heed to our leadership. It is said of us that we demand second-rate candidates and first-rate Presidents. Not all our Presidents have been great, but when the need has been great we have found men of greatness. We have not always appreciated them; usually we have denounced and belabored them living, and only honored them dead. Strangely, it is our mediocre Presidents we honor during their lives.

The relationship of Americans to their President is a matter of amazement to foreigners. Of course we respect the office and admire the man who can fill it, but at the same time we inherently fear and suspect power. We are proud of the President, and we blame him for things he did not do. We are related to the President in a close and almost family sense; we inspect his every move and mood with suspicion. We insist that the President be cautious in speech, guarded in action, immaculate in his public and private life; and in spite of these imposed pressures we are avidly curious about the man hidden behind the formal public image we have created. We have made a tough but unwritten code of conduct for him, and the slightest deviation brings forth a torrent of accusation and abuse.

The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment—social, political, or ethical—can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.

To all the other rewards of this greatest office in the gift of the people, we add that of assassination. Attempts have been made on the lives of many of our Presidents; four have been murdered. It would be comparatively easy to protect the lives of our Presidents against attacks by foreigners; it is next to impossible to shield them from the Americans. And then the sadness—the terrible sense of family loss. It is said that when Lincoln died African drums carried the news to the center of the Dark Continent that a savior had been murdered. In our lifetime two events on being mentioned will bring out the vivid memory of what everyone present was doing when he or she heard the news; those two events are Pearl Harbor and the death of John F. Kennedy. I do not know anyone who does not feel a little guilty that out of our soil the warped thing grew that could kill him.

It is said that the Presidency of the United States is the most powerful office in the world. What is not said or even generally understood is that the power of the chief executive is hard to achieve, balky to manage, and incredibly difficult to exercise. It is not raw, corrosive power, nor can it be used willfully. Many new Presidents, attempting to exert executive power, have felt it slip from their fingers and have faced a rebellious Congress and an adamant civil service, a respectfully half-obedient military, a suspicious Supreme Court, a derisive press, and a sullen electorate. It is apparent that the President must have exact and sensitive knowledge not only of his own office but of all the other branches of government if his program is to progress at all. The power of the President is great if he can use it; but it is a moral power, a power activated by persuasion and discussion, by the manipulation of the alignments of many small but aggressive groups, each one weak in itself but protected in combination against usurpation of its rights by the executive; and even if the national government should swing into line behind Presidential exercise of power, there remain the rights, prejudices, and customs of states, counties, and townships, management of private production, labor unions, churches, professional organizations of doctors, lawyers, the guilds and leagues and organizations. All these can give a President trouble; and if, reacting even to the suspicion of overuse or misuse of power, they stand together, a President finds himself hamstrung, straitjacketed, and helpless.

Americans are quite conscious that there are jagged holes in our system. Wishing to move, to meet new conditions and attitudes, we are nevertheless reluctant to change existing and traditional law. What has been written on paper long enough is written in our hearts, and it is very difficult to remove such lesions. Such a maze of connection and confusion is our curious trap of states' rights as opposed to federal rights.

When the Constitution was written, there were thirteen separate commonwealths which not only had their own economic, social, religious, and geographic identities, but—because of distances, lack of communication, roads, and so forth—necessarily maintained their separate polities. The original states could not have conceived of appealing for federal aid in education, health, harbor control, disaster, roads, rail and communications control and subsidy. It is true that some of the states formed loose alliances, such as those in New England and the South; but they remained thirteen individual, more or less self-sustaining small nations.