English people ... love to associate with persons of rank and power from a disinterested love of these things themselves, whereas in most other countries the society of notable and influential persons is chiefly sought from the most cynical motives of personal advantage.... But politics in England and politics in America, so far as the main points are concerned, are as different as it is possible for any two social functions to be. Roughly, Government and the doings of Government are centripetal in England, and centrifugal in America. In England the will of the people assists the working of Providence, whereas in America, devout persons pray that Providence may on occasion modify the will of the people. In England men believe in the Queen, the Royal Family, the Established Church, and Belgravia first, and in themselves afterwards. Americans believe in themselves devoutly, and a man who could “establish” upon them a church, a royalty, or a peerage, would be a very clever fellow.
His diagnosis of cynicism and self-interest as leading American characteristics is echoed in the other novels. Good politicians do appear, but for every Lincoln there are ten Boss Tweeds. Henry Adams’ Democracy also contains passages in which American political life is compared unfavorably with that of England. Madeleine Lee attends an immensely boring White House reception. Not only are the guests dull, but to her the President and his wife appear as automatons aping royalty.
Forces of Corruption
Complete responsibility for corruption does not always rest with the politician. Some office holders, like Honest John Vane, sincerely try to stay clean. The corrupt politician usually has a collaborator in the person of the man who buys him. In Garland’s A Spoil of Office Bradley Talcott’s illusions are shattered in the legislature and in Congress. Looking around him he finds that “to rob the commonwealth was a joke.” State legislatures are often described as assemblages of brigands. The “Woodchuck Session” of the legislature in Coniston is arrant banditry, and the ones in The Plum Tree and Mr. Crewe’s Career are only a little less obvious. The industrialist is usually co-villain with his politician hireling. When he does not appear in person, he is represented by his middleman, the professional lobbyist. The lobbyist’s unscrupulous use of his trusting wife is the subject of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Through One Administration (1914). Jacob Pike, in Playing the Mischief, regards the institution with pride:
From his point of view, it was a kind of public life; it was more completely “inside politics” than even electioneering or legislation; it was, as he believed, the very germ and main-spring of statesmanship. A leading lobbyist knew exactly how the world is governed, and for what purpose....
This whole aspect of the American governmental process in the novel is a very unsavory one. The industrialists are predatory robber barons who purchase dishonest politicians in order to obtain special privilege. In The Charterhouse of Parma the Contessa dissuades Fabrizio from going to America by explaining to him “the cult of the god Dollar.” In several of his novels Sinclair declares that American foreign policy has been determined by the industrial interests. He portrays Dollar Diplomacy with a vengeance. In Oil! he contends that the United States joined with Britain and France to fight the Bolsheviks not because of political ideology, but because “the creditor nations meant to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.” He also tells the reader that the same oil interests which backed Harding had turned in and out of office a succession of Mexican governments to suit their own commercial purposes. And it is not hard to see in Nostromo the influence of the American tycoon Holroyd at work when the American cruiser Powhatan appears to salute the Occidental flag and “put an end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War.”
If the perverters of power are not demagogues with messianic complexes, they may be gangsters who rule by ballots when bribery fails. These subjects in the novel did not go out of vogue with the Muckraking Era or with Prohibition. A new rash of novels about gangsters in politics has appeared in recent years. The gunman who is concerned about investing his money may be replacing the one who writes his name with machine gun bullets, but his influence in politics is the same.
The American Idealist
The reverse side of this particular coin shows the idealist at work. He may come out of the political wringer with his ideals mangled and his illusions full of holes, but still he retains something of the impulse which created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Millard Carroll in The Grand Design is such a one, but he emerges as an old man at the end of his ordeal. Nick Burr in Ellen Glasgow’s The Voice of the People (1900) is another, but his end is violent death. In recent years this idealistic aspect of the American political character has often found expression in heroes who engage in the direct struggle for liberty. Both Robert Jordan and Glenn Spotswood spill their blood on Spanish earth fighting against Franco. Were it not for the crusading district attorneys of books such as Ashes and Caesar’s Angel, the implication would be that the American girds on his armor abroad but avoids conflict in his own back yard. Even so, something of this impression may remain with the reader.
Responsibility at Home and Abroad