He had once asked many militant members of his party what had led them to Marxism, and nearly all of them had confessed that their original impulse, as in his case, had been moral condemnation of existing society. He had read the biographies of many revolutionaries, and he had never yet discovered anyone who had become a revolutionary out of scientific conviction or economic calculation.
The pangs of unrequited love are partially responsible for Peter Stirling’s dedication to success in politics in The Honorable Peter Stirling, just as Frances Motherwell’s rejection by Vic Herres, in The Troubled Air, causes her to denounce the Communist movement to which he is devoted. Other motivating forces are just as conventional. Such dissimilar characters as Fabrizio del Dongo in The Charterhouse of Parma and Jethro Bass in Coniston are influenced by the career of Napoleon. The will to power as a basic drive is more clearly put by Old Gisors in Man’s Fate: “every man dreams of being god.” Mary McCarthy in The Oasis (1949) labels Will Taub’s motivation as basically this when she says that “dreams of power and mastery, far more than its fraternal aspect, were what had attracted him to communism....” In some cases, like those of Silone’s heroes, the motivation is quite complex. Don Nicola, in A Handful of Blackberries, says that Rocco de Donatis “was the object of the clearest call from God that I have ever witnessed.” Yet he had become a Communist and left the Church like Pietro Spina in Bread and Wine “because of the profound disgust with which he reacted to the abyss which he perceived between its practical actions and the words it preached.” Even Spina’s name—literally “rock-thorn”—is symbolic of the conflict between these forces within him. The carpenter, merchant, clergyman, or teacher may drift into his vocation through family pressure or pursuit of the line of least resistance. Almost always the politician enters his because of a powerful driving force which is just as likely to be subconscious as conscious.
Moral Problems and Changing Values
Another characteristic of the politician in the novel is the often-met change in values. Basic to this process may be the frequency with which he encounters moral problems. Some may be like Senator Ratcliffe in Democracy, whose “weakness ... lay in his blind ignorance of morals.” But usually a choice must be made between that which is right and that which is profitable. Sometimes it is as clear-cut as whether or not DeForest’s John Vane should participate in the Great Subfluvial Tunnel Road (a satire on the Crédit Mobilier) which is to run under the Mississippi and unite Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico. Often the politician must decide if he will check his conscience in the cloakroom while he votes on a small issue in order to keep his party in power to attain larger ends. Trollope’s heroes usually make the difficult but morally right decision, but few applaud them. When Phineas Finn votes for the Irish Reform Bill, Lord Tulla declares, “Very dirty conduct I think it was.... After being put in for the borough twice, almost free of expense, it was very dirty.”
A symptom of changing values is the rejection of the constituency for the capitol. Even the Duke of Omnium begins to abandon the idea of retirement because “the poison of place and power and dignity had got into his blood.” The career of Bradley Talcott in A Spoil of Office is a classic example. He thinks of throwing up his political life until his renomination is threatened. Then he finds that his office is the breath of life in his nostrils. Jerome Garwood’s comment on returning to Washington from campaigning in The 13th District is that “it’s worth all a fellow has to go through out in that beastly mud hole to be back here where one can really live.” This pattern is bound up, of course, with the problem of conformity. In order to retain the prize, the politician must pay its price. Hamer Shawcross puts the best possible interpretation upon his own behavior when Pen Muff asks him why more can’t be done for the Welsh miners. He replies that they will do as much as they can without running the risk of being turned out of office:
I admit ... that it’s a matter of getting the most out of the second best. If all things were working for the best—why, there’d be no need of politics at all, Pen. I suppose the very word means not what we want but what is expedient.
The ultimate change in values, of course, is the sellout such as that of which Shawcross and Nimmo are accused. There are cases too in which the change takes the form not of deterioration but regeneration. Most of these are found in vintage American novels, however, in which the love of a good woman does the trick. Harvey Sayler, Jethro Bass, and Willis Markham all reject the spoils of unsavory careers and don penitential garments under this influence. The European treatment is much more subtle. In his cell, Rubashov finds that his interior monologues are really dialogues, “that there was a thoroughly tangible component in this first person singular, which had remained silent through all these years and now had started to speak.”
The Successful Politician
The individual who emerges most clearly from these novels is the successful politician. One can even draw a complete profile of his characteristics. And this composite illuminates not only the primary subject, but also his counterpart. In the interplay between them one sees the essence of that critical phenomenon, the leader-follower relationship. In The Prime Minister Trollope ponders these subjects:
If one were asked in these days what gift should a Prime Minister ask first from the fairies, one would name the power of attracting personal friends. Eloquence, if it be too easy, may become almost a curse. Patriotism is suspected, and sometimes sinks almost to pedantry. A Jove-born intellect is hardly wanted, and clashes with the inferiorities. Industry is exacting. Honesty is unpractical. Truth is easily offended. Dignity will not bend. But the man who can be all things to all men, who has ever a kind word to speak, a pleasant joke to crack, who can forgive all sins, who is ever prepared for friend or foe but never very bitter to the latter, who forgets not men’s names, and is always ready with little words,—he is the man who will be supported at a crisis.... It is for him that men will struggle, and talk, and if needs be, fight, as though the very existence of the country depended on his political security.