War of the Generations after the Great War

[T]hose years, during and just after the war, were a queer time to be at school, for England was nearer revolution than she has been since or had been for a century earlier. Throughout almost the whole nation there was running a wave of revolutionary feeling which has since been reversed and forgotten . . . . Essentially, though of course one could not then see it in perspective, it was a revolt of youth against age, resulting directly from the war. In the war the young had been sacrificed and the old had behaved in a way which, even at this distance of time, is horrible to contemplate; they had been sternly patriotic in safe places while their sons went down like swathes of hay before the German machine guns. Moreover, the war had been conducted mainly by old men and had been conducted with supreme incompetence. By 1918 everyone under forty was in a bad temper with his elders, and the mood of anti-militarism which followed naturally upon the fighting was extended into a general revolt against orthodoxy and authority. At that time there was, among the young, a curious cult of hatred of "old men." The dominance of "old men" was held to be responsible for every evil known to humanity, and every accepted institution from Scott's novels to the House of Lords was derided merely because "old men" were in favour of it.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), p. 170 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)

FDR's cagey juggling

"You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does," FDR once said of his strategies in statecraft. "I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war."

Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 81

What do Americans want?

"The American people," Dacheekan [campaign strategist] said, "are interested only in little things, not big things. They want to be fat., They want to be happy. That's all they care about, all they know. That's the reality."

"I have been with the people of this country from the Hudson to the Pacific," Freddy said, "and I know that you're wrong. It's people like you, who are no better than your contemptuous description of them, who crank the machinery that dulls their lives, who cater to the worst among them. They are a spiritual people. They want love and greatness. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived among them as you have not. I was taught to listen to the deeper heart, and from one end of this country to the other, I have."

Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 463

Reformer says: keep reforming

[T]he need for reform never ends. My hope for Seattle is that its leaders will continue to challenge dysfunction and injustice whenever and wherever it is found in our fair city.

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), Afterword

Prosecutor doesn't want be a political boss

I wanted to develop a different model—what I eventually came to call the Justice Model. I consciously tried to reduce the personal power of the prosecutor while extending the scope of the office itself. We looked for opportunities to rectify injustice, bring a rule of law to places neglected before, and make justice itself the guiding principle, not political influence or partisan benefit. I did not want to be a better political boss than Carroll; I wanted the office to move outside of the political world. 

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), ch. 7. (Bayley was King County Prosecutor 1971-78.)

Prosecutor uses staff for politics

Carroll's power base began in his office, with around fifty deputy prosecutors plus an equal number of supporting staff. After purging the staff he inherited in 1948, he subsequently hired loyal Republicans as replacements, enhancing his power in the Republican Party. With an eye toward reelection, he chose among Republicans on the basis of ethnic identity and political connections.

Carroll made further political use of his staff after he hired them, insisting they remain politically loyal to him and work in his campaigns. . . . Carroll told one deputy, "Look, this is a political office. You want to work for me, you work for me twenty-four hours a day. I want you to work on my campaign. Donate as much oney as you can to it, because when I don't have a job, you don't have a job."

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), ch.3. (Charles O. Carroll was King County Prosecuting Attorney 1948-70.)

 Chuck Carroll's idea of "diversity" had been like filling a twelve-crayon Crayola box: choose one of each color or ethnic group. He liked to boast this office was a mini-United Nations. but he used his deputies to garner political support from Seattle's orgnized racial and ethnic communities, not to reach out to them.

Id., ch. 7.

Vowell: skepticism is patriotic!

The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 158

Dull Hull

Dogged, conscientious, and dull, [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull was a plodding bureaucrat, a predictable thinker, and a boring public speaker. He worked six full days a week plus Sunday mornings, took a briefcase of papers home every evening, and shunned the capital's social life. His only recreation was an occasional game of croquet on the lawn of Henry Stimson's estate. Washington insiders called him "Parson Hull." 

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), ch. 15 

Adlai Stevenson's Baffling Appeal to Women

One notable exception to the chauvinist tradition was Adlai Stevenson. Women enjoyed Adlai. In the end, my mother, my daughter, and I all had close friendships with him. Clayton Fritchey once told me a story that helps explain Adlai’s appeal—and that contrasts it with what many of us felt about other men in the Kennedy administration, including the president himself. About three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, Clayton saw the president in New York, at a time when Adlai was the ambassador to the United Nations and Clayton was his deputy. The three men were together at a party, and Clayton was helping himself to a drink on the balcony overlooking Central Park when the president came up behind him and said, "We haven’t had a chance to talk much tonight, but we've got a good subject in common," meaning Adlai. The president then told Clayton he didn't understand the hold Adlai had over women, commenting on how much Jackie liked and admired him and confessing that he himself didn’t have the ease with women that Adlai had. "What do you suppose it is?" he asked, adding, "Look, I may not be the best-looking guy out there, but, for God’s sake, Adlai's half bald, he's got a paunch, he wears his clothes in a dumpy kind of way. What’s he got that I haven’t got?"

Clayton's response hit on what I think women saw in Adlai and what they shied away from in other men of that era. "Mr. President, I’m happy to say that for once you have asked me a question I’m prepared to answer, one I can answer truthfully and accurately. While you both love women, Adlai also likes them, and women know the difference. They all respond to a kind of message that comes across from him when he talks to them. He conveys the idea that they are intelligent and worth listening to. He cares about what they’re saying and what they’ve done, and that’s really very fetching."

The president's response was: "Well, I don’t say you're wrong, but I'm not sure I can go to those lengths."

Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), pp. 190-91.

What bugs Elizabeth Warren about the bailout

[W]hat really ate away at me was that we were never able to get the Treasury Department or the White House to do something meaningful about foreclosures. The president chose his team, and when there was only so much time and so much money to go around, the president's team chose Wall Street. America had the biggest bailout fund in history, and the Goliaths of banking gobbled it up. Meanwhile, millions of people lost their homes, and even now, years after the crash, millions more are scrambling to pay down underwater mortgages. 

Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), ch. 3

"Keep the people thoroughly informed"

[W]hile the district attorney did his work in the county where the voters could see how they were being served, Washington was a long way off. How were the people to know about the proceedings of Congress and the work of their congressman?

I thought it all over. It was clear to me that the only way to beat boss and ring rule was to keep the people thoroughly informed. Machine control is based upon misrepresentation and ignorance. Democracy is based upon knowledge. It is of first importance that the people shall know about their government and the work of their public servants. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." This I have always believed vital to self government.

Immediately following my election to Congress I worked out a complete plan for keeping my constituents informed on public issues and the record of my services in Congress; . . . .

When some Congressman made a speech on sound money . . . I would get the necessary number of copies of that speech, and send them to those interested in the money question. When the oleomargarine bill, the interstate commerce bill, and other important legislation was pending, I sent out speeches covering the debates thoroughly. In this way I supposed I sent out hundreds of thousands of speeches, my own and others.

Robert M. La Follette, "La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences,"  The American Magazine, Vol. 73, No. 1, Nov. 1911, p. 8

How straightforward was Truman?

[Truman] was as straightforward as a sentence without commas. 

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), ch. 21

FDR's patronage

He had also freely and consciously spent the oldest coin of political exchange: patronage. The New Deal had dispensed CWA and WPA jobs not only to the materially needy but to the politically needed.

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), ch. 9 (Kindle location 5098)

FDR's "class warfare"

In reality all of Roosevelt's antibusiness "radicalism" in 1936 was a carefully staged political performance, an attack not on the capitalist system itself but on a few high-profile capitalists. This may have been class warfare, as Roosevelt's critics howled, but it was only a war of words.

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), ch. 9