Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and

understand yet another business book, on the Leadership Lessons from the Great

Books podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the

great books of the Writers canon. You know those

books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in

high school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn't have the time

to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from

literature to execute leadership best practices in

the confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

inhabit. Welcome to the Rescuing of Western Civilization

at the Intersection of Literature and Leadership.

Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast.

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

number 91 with our book

today, a meditation

on practical politics, from a

former president from the early

20th century, the leader of the Bull Moose

Party and a progressive Republican who charged

at San Juan Hill, a man who would

describe himself as being self made and yet a

man who came from what was considered one of the richest

families in the early 20th century.

Essays from a man who busted

trusts and placed himself against

what we would call the gilded billionaires of his time.

We are going to be reading today a couple of

essays on practical politics

by state legislature turned

president Theodore Roosevelt.

Leaders have a vision of the future at the end of

the year rather than continuing to flagellate and

naval gaze in abstractions about sins and

transgressions of the past. And when you do that,

realize that the new man you're

seeking to create is still going to be bound

by the exegesis of human

nature.

And so we're going to pick up today, in Essays on

Practical Politics by Theodore Roosevelt,

written during the time when he was in the New York

State Assembly, a representative from the 21st

district. He began as a,

minority leader, on January 1, 18/83.

And then he, he continued his

service in, in government by moving on to the United

States Civil Service Commission and then later to presidency of

the New York City Board of Police Commissioners. But Theodore

Roosevelt, t Teddy Roosevelt, t r Roosevelt,

was a member of the New York State Assembly, starting in

January 1, 18/82, through December 31st

of 18/84, and he ascended, as I said there

previously, to being minority leader in January of

18/83. So these essays, which,

I, got as a reprint from the collection of the University of Michigan

Libby, via Google Book, so this is open source. Can

go check this out, were written during his time

in the state legislature, and were published, as

part of, Teddy Roosevelt's Attempt to, get

people to understand how legislation, how

parliamentary procedure, and how government

actually works. So picking up from

the introduction from Teddy Roosevelt's essays on

practical politics. These

2 essays appeared originally in the century. Both alike were

criticized at the time as offering no cure for the evils

they portrayed. Such criticism shows in the 1st

place a curious ignorance of what is meant by the diagnosis of a

disease. For my articles pretended to do nothing more than

give what has apparently never before been given, an

accurate account of certain phases of our political life with its good

and bad impartially set forth. The practical politician,

who alone knows how our politics are really managed, is rarely willing

to write about them unless with very large reservations.

While the student reformer, whose political experience is limited to the dinner

table, the debating club, or an occasional mass meeting where none but his

friends are present and who yet seeks in pamphlet or editorial column to

make clear the subject hardly ever knows exactly what he is talking about

and abuses the system in all its parts with such looseness of

language as to wholly take away the value even from such utterance

such of his utterances as are true.

In the 2nd place, such criticism shows in the mind of the critic, the tendency

so common among imperfectly educated people to clamor for

cure all or quack remedies. The same habit of

thought that makes a man in one class of life demand a medicine that will

ease all of his complaints offhand makes another

man who probably considers himself very much higher in the social

scale expect some scheme of reform that will, at a

single fell swoop, do away with every evil from which the

body politic is suffering. Each of these

men is willing enough to laugh at the other. And after all, their inconsistency is

no greater than is that of the editor who in 1 column denounces governmental

interference with the hours of labor and in the next calls for

governmental interference with the party primaries or vice versa,

apparently not seeing that both are identical in kind and being

perhaps necessary deviations from the old American principle that the

state must not interfere with individual action even

to help the weak. There are many reforms,

each of which, if accomplished, would do us would do us much good.

But for permanent improvement, we must rely upon bettering our general

health, upon raising the tone of our political system.

Thus, the enactment enforcement of laws making the merit system as

contrasted with the spoils system universally applicable among all minor

officials of county, state, and nation would measurably improve our

public service and would be of a measurable benefit to all honest men, rich or

poor, who desire to do their duty of public affairs without being opposed Tom bans

tens of trained mercenaries. The regulation of the liquor traffic so

as to expose it to strict supervision and to minimize its attendant evils would

likewise do immense good. But even if the power of the saloons was

broken and public office no longer a reward for partisan service,

many and great evils would remain to be battled with.

No law or laws can give us good government. At the utmost, they

can only give us the opportunity to ourselves to

get good government. For instance, until the control of

the alderman over the mayor's appointments was taken away by Bill, which I always

esteemed Tom my chief of service to have introduced and been instrumental in

passing, New York City politics were hopeless.

Now it rests with the citizens themselves to elect

a man who will serve them wisely

and faithfully.

So this year on the, on the podcast or the season On

the podcast, I guess, we're going to or we're going to

continue the efforts that I talked about in

our New Year's Day post where we sort of laid out

the foundation for where we're going to be going here in, in 2024.

And, of course, it is an election year in the United States of America.

We have the republican primary occurring, right now as I'm

recording this, this podcast episode

today. It's been going on for quite some time. We have a

democrat primary, ostensibly, that is

also running, although everyone knows that the current president

is probably going to be the nominee barring ill health

or death. And so there's really no surprises

right now, in America, around our

presidential politics. The only real surprise in

2024 is what is the battleground

upon which, the election will be

he fought. What is going to be, to use a military

terminology, what's going to be the Gettysburg, what's going to be the Verdun, what's going

to be the Mogadishu that

the various parties and their supporters and

factions, or the 2 parties and their supporters and factions will wind

up on. A lot of that battleground is occurring,

or is being laid out, and has been for, since for the

last 4 years since the last election, has been

laid out on social media, on places

like Facebook and TikTok and YouTube

and Twitter. Social media platforms have become the

new battlegrounds. But, also,

the old battlegrounds are still there, and these are battlegrounds

around ideas. Now I'm a big

fan of ideas, as you know, if you listen to this podcast for any length

of time. And so we're going to explore an idea in this

episode. We're gonna use Theodore Roosevelt's ideas that

he wrote as a young assemblyman as an anchor for where we can

go to think about this idea. And, of course,

this year, we are exploring solutions to problems, not merely,

chewing over over old problems repeatedly and

then not offering any solutions. So, well,

Roosevelt offers some solutions, and that's helpful because we need to think about

solutions in an election year to some of the more damning

and damaging problems that we have currently

in the body politic.

Roosevelt opens essays on practical politics with the

introduction that I read, by going back to

an age old question, which we we explored in episode number 90 with

Tom Libby. I would encourage you to go listen to that episode, the one we

kicked off this year with, on the republic by Plato.

And, and and he he begins with this

idea, which has haunted, American

politics for decades, probably going all the way back

to the founding, honestly. And it is this idea of what kind of

guardians do we want to rule over us?

What kind of people do we want to have in

charge? Do we wanna have people who are moral? Do we wanna have people who

are ethical? Or do we wanna have people who

are progressive in their political thinking,

but who are maybe a bit more conservative in their social

thinking? Or do we want to have alignment

in our guardians? Do we want to have alignment between

their personal lives and their professional pursuits,

or do we all want to be deceived?

This is a key question. Do we want

to be deceived? Do we want to have alignment? Do we want

to have a mismatch? And each voter answers this

question differently for themselves inside of themselves.

And then the mass of voters, not necessarily always the

majority, and then our society pushes

through culture, through social norming, through,

the Book Politic pushes our elected leaders,

and actually raises up our elected leaders, from

the lowest possible level to the highest possible level,

and and and encourages them to become, Well, whatever it is

we want them to become. And Roosevelt's going to

talk about the difference between, versus

leaders from the country. And that difference, even though it existed in

18/83, when he writes about it, you can still

hear the difference today. The only

maybe real change there is that the person from the

country and the person from the city are now both on Instagram.

Legislatures are made up of people, and people in any society are

fundamentally flawed. The fundamental

catch in human nature is that we are full of sin. We

are full of sin from beyond the cradle. And sometimes

some of us don't get ahold of it, and it we take it with us

beyond the grave. And no amount of utopian

manipulation is going to change that. That is

beyond the can of politics. But

in the 19 sixties 19 seventies in this country,

the Libby born generation began a mantra. They began

stating the idea or at least began really buying into the idea

at a mass level that we could create this new man. We could

create this new human being through the vagaries of

technology, This human being that would not be flawed

and that if at minimum we couldn't create a human being, at the

very minimum we could create new politics, and the politics

would lead us well, would lead us to a new world

order.

Just like most utopian schemes, that didn't happen.

And now we're left with the same old problems searching

for ancient solutions.

Back to the book, back to essays on practical

politics. So we're going to pick up, here in

his first essay, that Theodore Roosevelt

wrote, once again for, as he mentions in the introduction,

for Century Magazine.

This is on the phases of state legislation

in the Albany legislature. So for those of you who are

unaware, Albany is the capital of the state

of New York, not New York City as much as you may think it

should be. And, when you

shuffle off to Albany, from New York City or from

anywhere else in New York state, even back in 18/83,

you were going someplace that had a lot of political clout.

We don't think of New York state as having political clout these days. As a

matter of fact, a lot of our thinking around that has moved,

to places like Texas or California or

Florida because of population shifts.

But back in the early part of the 20th

century and the late part of 19th century, New

York state was the state to go to. New York state was the state

to be in. As a matter of fact, New York state was a very strong

Republican state. New York City has always leaned

Democrat. It has book, of course, become more Democrat and more

more progressive over the course of time. But in the, later part

of 19th century and the early part of 20th century, New York State

itself was, in the modern conception of electoral

politics in America, a red state. As a matter of fact, most of the

country was a red country. Now

With that being said, Roosevelt,

and not just Teddy Roosevelt, but also,

his, his cousin who would come along later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

were considered to be, relatively moderate to liberal,

republicans during their time. Now that means something

different than what it means now. And

they were governing and they were leading from a

sense of Victorian aristocracy, which,

again, we don't have a whole lot of examples of that in our

modern society, in our modern culture. And so when Roosevelt

writes, about the, the

phases of legislation, he is going to start with this

core idea, which comes out of Victorian mindset,

this core idea of character. So we're going to pick up

from his essays on practical politics with the character

of the representatives. The

representatives from different sections the state differ widely in character.

Those from the country districts are generally very good men. They are

usually well-to-do farmers, small lawyers, or prosperous storekeepers and are

shrewd, quiet, and honest, they are often narrow minded and slow to receive

an idea. But on the other hand, when they get a good one, they cling

to it with the utmost Tenacity.

They form very much the most valuable class of legislators. For the most

part, they are Native Americans, and those who are not are men who have become

completely Americanized in all their ways and habits of thought.

One of the most useful members of the last legislature was a German from a

writers county, and the extent of his Americanization can be

judged from the fact that he was actually an ardent prohibitionist.

Certainly, no one who knows Teutonic human nature will require further proof.

Again, I sat for an entire session beside a very intelligent member from Northern

New York before I discovered that he was an Irishman. All his

views of legislation, even upon such subjects as free schools and the improved

propriety of making appropriations from the treasury for the support

of sectarian institutions were precisely similar to those of his

protestant American neighbors, though he himself was a Catholic.

Now a German or an Irishman from one of the great cities would have retained

most of his national peculiarities.

It's from the same great cities that the worst legislators come. It's

true that there are always among them a few cultivated and scholarly men who

are well educated and who stand on a higher and broader intellectual and moral

plane than the county members, but the bulk are very low indeed.

They are usually foreigners of little or no education with

exceedingly misty ideas as to morality and possessed of an

ignorance so profound that it could only be called a comic

were not for the fact that it has at times such serious effects upon our

laws. It is their ignorance Quite as much

as actual viciousness, which makes it so difficult to procure the

passage of good laws or prevent the passage of bad ones. And it is the

most irritating of the many elements with which we have to contend in the

fight for good government.

Mention has been made above of the bribe taking, which undoubtedly at times occurs

in the New York legislature. This is what is commonly called a

delicate subject with which Diiella, therefore, according to our usual

methods of handling delicate subjects, it is either never discussed at all or

else discussed with the grossest exaggeration. But most certainly, there is

nothing about it which is more important to know about which it is more important

to know the truth. In the each of the last

3 legislatures, there were a number of us who were

interested in getting through certain measures which we deemed to be for the public

good, but which were certain to be strongly opposed, some for

political and some for pecuniary reasons.

Now to get through any such measure requires genuine hard work, a certain

amount of parliamentary skill, a good deal of tact and courage, and above all,

a thorough knowledge of the men with whom one has to deal and of the

motives which actuated them. In other words,

before taking any active steps, we had to size up our fellow legislators to find

out their past history and present character and associates, to find out

whether they were their own masters or were acting under the direction of someone else,

whether they were bright or stupid, etcetera, etcetera.

As a result and after very careful study conducted purely with the object of

learning the truth so that we might work more effective effectually, we

came to the conclusion that about a third of the members were open to corrupt

influences in some form or other. In certain sessions, the proportion was

greater and in some less. Now it would, of course, be impossible for

me or anyone else to prove in a court of law that these men were

guilty except perhaps in 2 or 3 cases. Yet we felt

absolutely confident that there was hardly a case in which our judgment as to the

honesty of any given member was not correct. The 2 or 3 exceptional

cases alluded to where legal proof of guilt might have been forthcoming were instances

in which honest men were approached by their colleagues at times when the need for

votes was very great. But even then, it would have been almost impossible to

punish the offenders before a court for it would have merely resulted in his

denying what his accuser stated. Moreover, the

members who had been approached would have been very reluctant to come forward for each

of them felt ashamed that his character should not have been well enough to

known well enough known to prevent anyone's daring to speak to him on such a

subject. And another reason why the few honest men who are

approached for the Libby rarely makes a mistake in his estimate of the men

who will be apt to take bribes, do not feel like taking

action in the matter is that a doubtful lawsuit will

certainly follow, which will drag on so long

that the public will come to regard all of the participants with equal

distrust while in the end, the decision is

quite as likely to be against them as

to be for

them.

Alright. So what are we to take from that? Well,

I think the biggest thing we could take from that is the character counts.

Right? Men from the city, men from the country.

And and he talks a lot in that piece there about,

people of certain national origin. Right? And he talks about

Americanization. Back in the late

19th century, just as in our own

time, immigration was going on, but not immigration

from Mexico to America. No. No. No. No. No. It was

immigration from Eastern Europe to North

America that was happening, particularly people of Slavic

origin, Russians, Eastern Europeans,

Ukrainians, Hungarians, those types of folks,

folks who are Polish, out of a Polish background were coming to the

country, as well as Italians,

and, folks from Southern Europe, like the Greeks.

Right? Those folks were coming to America. They were coming to America in

bucketfuls. And I've been to Ellis Island before. And, actually, I

shouldn't say bucketfuls, shipfuls. And they were showing up. They were

being deloused. They were being given Americanized names,

they were being sent Tom, well, sent to

boroughs in New York City or sent west, to

work in places like, Kansas

and Missouri and Wisconsin and

Nebraska. We read a little bit about this,

last year when we covered, My Antonia.

And that was episode number 84 by Willa Cather where we

talked about where she, talked about immigration,

from, those foreign countries and how that impacted,

people in Nebraska, people who were Americans.

So when Roosevelt talks about Americanization, he's talking about

people shedding their,

shedding their Eastern Europeanness to become

white Anglo Saxon protestants, to become WASPs. Right?

And that's why he was surprised by the German, but

he was also surprised by the Irish. Now the

the thing with Irish folks, and there are Irish Protestants as well

as Irish Catholics. The big concern in the late 19th

century historically, in America was the presence of

Catholicism and the idea among the white Anglo

Saxon protestant majority in the United States at the

time that anyone Catholic was going to be more loyal to the

pope than they were going to be loyal to the constitution.

See, this was back when religion actually mattered and when

people actually had a religious, mindset. It

didn't mean they were moral. It didn't mean that they did not sin. It did

not mean that they did not make mistakes or have opinions

that we would find Tom be disgusting or just

hard to hear, what it meant was they had a

religious framework to put those opinions into.

And it was a religious framework that was given to them by the Protestant church

and, of course, by the Catholic church. And there were a lot of Catholics in

New York State at the Time. New York state now,

irony upon ironies, is now one of the least religious

states, in the northeast and one of the, I believe, the top

5 or top 10 least religious states in the United

States. Where did all the Catholics and protestants go that were once

in New York City? Well, they all immigrated to other

places or they were well, and I

hate to frame it this way, but they were pushed out of their boroughs.

Right? They or they abandoned their religion,

after World War 2 and raised subsequent generations to

be a religious and rely on the WASP culture

to do the work that family

and the church used to do. So this is why

Teddy Roosevelt was surprised at the Irish guy whom

he thought would be more akin to what the pope wanted was

really akin to what, well, to what

Roosevelt wanted as a member of the WASP

aristocracy. These dynamics are still

playing out today in America. That's why I'm bringing this up.

Look. If you are listening to this and you were born anywhere between

1984 and 1997 or if you were born between 1997

and, and and 2017. I want you to listen very,

very closely. Nothing that you are seeing anywhere on

social media around politics is new. None of

the racial division is new. None of the,

political division is new. The thing that is different is we don't

have religious language to encapsulate how we talk about this division, and

we need to get that back into our body politic, I think.

But we do think of politics religiously. We do think of

politics in the same way Theodore Roosevelt did. It was just that we don't like

to say it out loud. Or I should say,

those who are on the left and the right of political factions in the United

States like to talk about nothing but politics, but they

talk about it in the language not of solving problems, which is

what frustrates many of you, but they talk about it in the fervent language

of religion, which means there's always an existential

crisis, and there's never a transcendent

solution. Theodore Roosevelt is doing

something different in Essays on Practical Politics. That's why it's called

Essays on Practical Politics. Key term

there is practical. What are we actually doing?

What's the actual outcome of our character? And that's why he starts off

with character. That's why he talks about who these people are and

how they have become Americanized because book in the day, the solution to the

character problem was that everybody needed to be or needed to adopt

writers angle Jesan protestants Sorrells.

Do we advocate for that now? Well, no. No. We

don't. Now in America in 2024, I think Theodore

Roosevelt would be shocked at how much of a melting pot

we have. But he would not be shocked that even in that melting

pot, a person of, Hispanic descent, a

person of African American descent, a person, who is

a lesbian, a person who identifies as being gay, a

person who identifies as being, you know, a

vegan, a person who identifies in any of these other spaces

where we put identity these days is still behaving with their

character in the exact same way that the

legislatures and the legislators were behaving

with their character In 18/83,

there are no new things under the sun.

And the practical nature of people and the practical

motivations of people should not

be masked by calls

or appeals to their identity. Instead, we should look

through those surface things. This is a practical solution to

this problem. We should look past the surface appeals

and begin to look more closely and to

examine more critically people's hearts

and motives.

Alright. Back to the book, back to essays on Practical

Politics. We're going to pick up a little bit further down,

and we're going to address, in in

parallel to this idea fear of character,

in the state legislator. We're going to talk about

incidents of legislative experience,

and, we're going to see how the shenanigans of the past,

seem to have an echo in the shenanigans over

the present from Essays on Practical

Politics by Theodore Roosevelt. A mixture of

classical and constitutional misinformation was displayed a few

sessions podcast in state senate before I was myself a

member of the legislature. It was on that occasion it was on

the occasion of that annual nuisance, the debate upon the Catholic

protectory item of the supply bill. Every year, someone who

is desirous of bidding for the Catholic vote introduces this bill, which appropriates

a sum of varying dimensions for the support of the Catholic protectory, an

excellent institution, but one which has no right whatever to come to the state for

support. Each year, the insertion of the item is opposed by a small

number of men, including the more liberal Catholics themselves

on proper grounds and by a larger number from simple bigotry. A fact which

was shown 2 years ago when many of the most bitter opponents of this

measure cheerfully supported a similar and equally objectionable one

in aid of a Protestant institution. On the occasion

referred to, there were 2 senators, both Celtic gentlemen, who were rivals

for the leadership of the minority. One of them a stout, red faced literature

man who went by the name of Commodore, owing to his having seen service in

the navy, while the other was a dapper, valuable fellow who had at one

time been on a civic commission and was always called the

counselor. A mild mannered countryman was opposing the

insertion of the item on the ground, perfectly just by the way, that it was

unconstitutional, and he dwelled upon this objection at some

length. The counselor who knew nothing of the constitution, except that it

was continually being quoted against all of his favorite projects fidgeted about for

some time and podcast jumped up to know if he might ask the gentleman a

question. The latter said yes, and the counselor went on,

I'd like to know if the gentleman has ever personally seen the Catholic protectory.

No. I haven't, said the astonished countryman. Then what do you

mean by talking about it being unconstitutional? I like to know. It's no more

unconstitutional than you are, not one bit. I know it, for I've

been it and seen it, and that's more than you've done. They turned into

the house with a slow and withering sarcasm, he added,

the throne with the gentleman is that he occupies what lawyers will call a kinda

quasi position upon this bill and sat down

amid the applause of his followers.

His rival, the Commodore, felt he had gained altogether to its glory from the

encounter. And after the nonplus countrymen had taken his seat, he stopped

solidly over to the desk of the elated counselor, looked at him

majestically for a moment, and said, you'll excuse my

mentioning Sorrells that a gentleman who has just sat down knows more law in a

week than you do in a month. And more than that, counsel Shaughnessy, what

do you mean by quote, in Latin on the floor at his house when you

don't know the alpha and the omega of the language. And back

he walked, leaving the counselor in humiliated submission

behind him. Pause for just a moment.

I don't think that there's anything better that

anyone's doing on Instagram than that entire interaction

right there. Back to the book.

The counselor was always falling foul of the constitution.

Once when defending one of his bills, which made a small but wholly indefinable

appropriation of state money for a private purpose, he asserted, that the constitution

didn't touch little things like that. And on another occasion, he remarked to

my presence that he never allowed the constitution to come between

friends. The Commodore was, at that time,

chairman of a senate committee before which there sometimes came

questions affecting the interests or supposed interests of labor.

The committee was hopelessly bad in its composition, the members being

either very corrupt or exceedingly inefficient. The Commodore

generally kept order with a good deal of dignity. Indeed, when, when as

not to in as not infrequently happened, he had looked upon

the rye that was flavored with lemon peel. His sense of personal

dignity grew till it become fairly majestic, and he ruled the

committee with a rod of iron. By the way, pause.

When Roosevelt says, and I quote, he had looked upon the rye that was flavored

with lemon peel, what he means is the man had been drinking rye

whiskey with Lemon. Back to the

book. At one time, a bill had been introduced, one of the several

score of preposterous measures that annually made their appearance purely for purposes

of Buncombe, by whose terms all laborers of the public

works of great cities were to receive $3 a day, double the market

price of labor. To this bill, by the way, an amendment

was afterwards offered in the house by some gentleman with a sense

of humor, which was to make it read that all the inhabitants of great

cities $53 a day and the privilege of laboring on the

public works if they chose. The original author of the bill

questioning questioning doubtfully if the amendment didn't make

the measure a trifle Tom sweeping. The measure was, of course,

of no consequence whatever to the genuine laboring men,

but was of interest to the professional labor agitators,

and a body of the latter requested to leave to appear before the committee.

This was granted, but on the appointed day, the chairman turned up in a condition

of such pretentious dignity as to make it evident that he had been out on

a spree of protracted duration. Down he sat at the

head of the table and glared at the committee men while the latter whose faces

would not have looked amiss in a rogue's gallery cowered before

him. The 1st speaker was a typical professionally laboring man,

a sleek, oily literature fellow with a black mustache who had never done a stroke

of work in his life. He felt confident that the Commodore would favor

him, a confidence soon to be rudely shaken and began with a

deprecatory smile. Humble though I

am. Rap, rap, rap with the chairman's gavel and the following dialogue

occurred. Chairman with dignity, What's that you said you were,

sir? Professional working man decidedly taking aback.

I I I said I was humble, sir. Chairman reproachfully, are you an

American citizen? Professional working man. Yes, sir. Chairman

with emphasis. Then you're the equal of any man in this state. Then you're the

equal of any man on this committee. Don't let me hear you call yourself humble

again. Go on, sir. After this

warning, the advocate managed to keep clear of the rocks until having worked himself up

to quite a pitch of excitement, he unconsciously exclaimed, but the

poor man has no friends, which brought the Commodore down on him at

once. Wrap wrap wrap with his gavel and he scowled grimly at the offender

while he asked with deadly deliberation, what did you say that

time, sir? Professional working man hopelessly. I said the poor

man had no friends, sir. Chairman with sudden fire, then you lied,

sir. I am the poor man's friend. So are my colleagues, sir. Here, the

rogue's gallery tried to look benevolent. Speak the truth, sir. With a

sudden change from the matter admonitory to the matter mandatory,

Now you sit down quick or get out of here some or get out of

this somehow. This put an end to the sleek gentleman

and his place was taken by a fellow professional of another type, a great

burly man who would talk to you on private matters at a perfectly natural tone

of voice, but who, the minute he began to speak of the wrongs with a

capital w, of Libby with capital l, bellowed it as he as if

he had bet a bull of. The commodore, by this time, pretty

far gone, eyed him benevolently, swaying to and fro in his chair.

However, the first effect of the fellow's oratory was soothing rather than

otherwise and produced the unexpected result of sending the

chairman fast asleep, Sitting Bolt Upright.

But in a minute or 2, as the man warmed up to his work, he

gave a peculiarly resonant howl, which

wake the Commodore up. The latter came to himself with a

jerk, looked fixedly at the audience having caught sight of the speaker,

remembered having seen him before, forgot that he had been asleep, and concluded

that it must have been on some previous day. Hammer, hammer, hammer with the gavel,

and I've seen you before, sir. You have not,

said the man. Don't tell me I lie, sir, responded the Commodore with a sudden

ferocity. You've addressed this committee on a previous day. I

have never began the man, but the Commodore broke in again. Sit down, sir. The

dignity of the chair must be preserved. No man shall speak to this committee twice.

The committee stands adjourned. And with that,

he stalked majestically out of the room, leaving the committee

and the delegation to gaze sheepishly

into each other's

Faces.

The late great political commentator

radio political commentator, Rush Limbaugh, I

think I can probably I've been far enough away now from

his, passing a few years ago to be

able to quote this Tom you. He used to say on

his show that and it is a

clever sort of framing for

what we just read there. He used to say politics

is celebrity for the ugly.

And he wasn't wrong. Ugly in behavior, ugly in

character, or just even ugly in Jesan, but he

was really focused on how, you know, politicians like to

hobnob with, with actresses and

Sorrells, And, of course, we see that even in our day.

But an interesting twist has occurred in the last 25

years or so, and, of course, it has speeded up in the

last 10 to 15 years with the

ubiquitousness of social media. Now we have politicians

who are beautiful or who could maybe be on the

cover of a magazine or maybe are attractive enough

to have their own show on the

radio or maybe even on the television. And you have

these people running around doing politics

and becoming celebrities and being beautiful.

Lauren Bonnert is attractive. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not

hard on the eyes. Rashid Tlaib is

not ugly. Dan Crenshaw is not

hideous. And, of course, Tulsi Gabbard looks

like she walked off of the cover of

Vanity Fair.

The politicians of the past were less concerned with their physical

appearance and more concerned with

getting stuff Done.

Or at least that's what we believe. Right? We believe that they were more

concerned with getting stuff done. But you You think about

that clip, right, that, that piece that I read there from Teddy

Roosevelt's own observation of politicians in

Albany in 18/83, 18/84, and in 18/85.

What you realize is they were no more concerned with getting things done back then

than they are concerned with getting things done

Now politics is not about getting stuff done.

Politics for politicians is about having power. It's

about being able to bang the gavel, talk over people,

get special favors, tell people what

you want them to do and have the

power to make laws, which are basically just force

on paper, to make laws so that the

thing that you want to have happen or the interest that you have to

serve gets whatever it

is that you promised them. The dirty

little secret of politics in America, particularly politics in

Washington, DC, and all the politicians that I mentioned are in Washington, DC, but you

could find the same politicians in your local legislature or even in

your state legislature, you can find the same people running for

political position, in your local city council or on your

school board or running for mayor. In

general, what happens is people are more effective

the closer they are to the voters as politicians, and they are

less effective the further away they are as

politicians from the people. I

like Tulsi Gabbard and everything, and Dan Crenshaw seems like a cool

guy, but he's never gonna know who I am, and she's not

gonna care what I think about anything,

which is why many of these politicians are going to well,

not are going to, but are are consumed with creating Instagram

accounts, and they are consumed with becoming celebrities in the

same way that star athletes who used to be consumed

with winning games now are more

consumed with what their Instagram followers or their TikTok

views are. That's a

major shift. Right? I mean, Quentin not Quentin. Sorry. Not Quentin.

Andy Warhol. Not Quentin Tarantino. Andy Warhol infamously said

back in the day, and I think Tarantino would probably agree with him, that everyone

at some point will have their own 15 minutes of fame.

And you could even say that I'm doing the podcast to get my own 15

minutes of fame. Right?

What are our motives for doing what we do? What are our motives for being

in politics? What are your motives for having an Instagram account? What are your

motives for running for political

office? Are you running to actually change things

or are you running for personal aggrandizement? Are you

running so that you can bang a gavel and talk over people? The

example that I think of is, is the

late great Gary Shandling, right, who

portrayed a senator in, Iron Man 1 and Iron

Man 2, and I believe he was also in Iron Man

3. And he pinned a, put a pin,

a medal on Tony Stark after a particularly

contentious senatorial hearing, and he whispered to

him, isn't it annoying, and I'm paraphrasing, but isn't

it annoying what a little prick can do to you? Now I

personally think Gerry Gary Shandling is was a fairly funny comedian,

and, of course, he looks like a United States senator.

He was ugly. He was never physically appealing, and he

knew it. And by the way, that was part of the joke.

But the point is, What are your motives for doing what you're

doing? What are your motives for attaining fame? What do you wanna do with

that thing once you get it? We

don't ask our politicians this nearly often enough.

And very often because we do not ask, we

we don't get an answer. And by the way, the people who do

ask, what are you gonna do with that power? Typically tend to be

people with money who want something to

happen that benefits them. They want to

provide the answer to the politician for what they

will do with the power. And, typically, the answer

is, well, I'll do what benefits the person who gives me the

most money. If you're

okay with that, then keep on not paying attention to politics. Keep

on thinking that it doesn't matter. Keep on thinking that that's something

for smarter people someplace else over there. And by the way, Teddy Roosevelt

makes that point as well in his essays on practical

politics. It is up to the electorate to hold

the legislator's feet to the fire. It

is up to us to mold our guardians into whatever

mold we want them to be in, and it is up to

us to keep them honest.

But if we're not smart enough or courageous enough

or tactful enough or aware of parliamentary procedure

enough to be able to do that or if we

just don't care and just want the system to quote unquote

work, well, then we're going to get

People who want celebrity and money

and power but not much else.

Back to the book, back to essays on practical

politics by Theodore Roosevelt. So we're gonna turn a

corner here as we approach the close of our podcast

today, And we're going to talk about

we're gonna talk about the machine and machine politics,

not only in New York City in 18/83,

but we're going to make some points about machine politics or Roosevelt's

gonna make some points about machine politics that resonate down

to our time. And I quote, in

New York Libby, as in most of our other great municipalities, the direction of political

affairs has been for many years mainly in the hands of a class of men

who make politics their regular business and means of livelihood.

These men are able to keep their grip only by means of the singularly perfect

way in which they have succeeded in organizing their respective parties and

factions. And it is consequence of the clockwork regularity and

efficiency with which these several organizations play their parts, alike for

good and evil, that they have been nicknamed by outsiders machines.

While the men who take part in a control Sorrells they would themselves say

run them, form now a well recognized and fairly well defined

class in the community and are familiarly

known as machine politicians. It may be

of interest to sketch and outline some of the characteristics of these men and

of their machines, the methods by which and the objects

for which they book, and the reasons for their success in the

political field. The men having control and doing all

the work have gradually come Tom have the same feeling about

politics, these are the machine men, that are running the machine,

that other men have about the business of a merchant or a Facturer,

it was too much to expect that if left entirely to themselves, they would continue

disinterestedly to work for the benefit of others. Many a machine

politician who is today a most unwholesome influence on our politics

is in private life quite as respectable as anyone else. Only he has

forgotten that his business affects the state at large and regarding it as

merely his own private concern, he has carried into it the

same selfish spirit that actuates the majority of the

mercantile community. Our machine

politicians in actual life act in just the same way. Their actions

are almost always dictated by selfish motives with but

little regard for the people at large. They therefore need continually

to be watched and opposed by those who wish to see good

government. And then Roosevelt describes the

causes of machine politics here, and I quote, the

chief causes, thus operating against good government are the

moral and mental attitudes towards politics assumed by different sections

of the voters. There is a great class of laboring

men, mostly of foreign birth or parentage, who at present both expect too

much from legislation and yet at the same time realize too little how

powerfully, though indirectly, they are affected by a bad or

corrupt government. In many wards, the overwhelming majority of the voters

do not realize that heavy taxes fall ultimately upon

them and actually view with perfect complacency, burdens laid

by their representatives upon the taxpayers, and if anything, approve of a

hostile attitude towards the latter, having a vague feeling of

hostility towards them as possessing more than their proper proportion of

The World's Good Things, and sharing with most other human beings the

capacity to bear with philosophic equanimity, ills merely affecting

one's neighbors. When powerfully roused on

some financial but still bore on some sentimental question, the same

laboring class will throw its enormous and usually decisive weight

into the scale, which it believes inclines to the right. But

its members were often curiously and cynically indifferent

to charges of corruption against favorite heroes or demagogues so

long as these charges do not imply betrayal of their own real or

fancied interests. These voters are moreover

very emotional. They value in a public man what we are accustomed

to consider virtues only to be taken into account when estimating private

character. I have more than once heard the statement, he is very

liberal to the poor. Advanced is a perfectly satisfactory answer to the charge

that a certain public man was corrupt. These

working men are hardly prepared to understand or approve the American doctrine of

government, which is that the state has no business whatever

to attempt to better the condition of a man or set of men, but

has merely to see that no wrong is done him or them by anyone else,

and that all alike are to have a fair chance in the struggle for life,

a struggle wherein it may as well be at

Tom may as well at once, be freely thought be freely, though

sadly, acknowledged, very many are bound to fail

no matter how ideally perfect any given system

of government may

There's an idea, that was

stated in, Game of Thrones way back in the

day. If you remember that show, You remember the ones of the

dragons and, looked like medieval

Tom? And, there was a blonde woman running around in it, She had an 800

ton dragon. Remember that? Yeah. Well, the

blonde woman told the short guy, the midget or I'm sorry. It's

not midget. It's Small person. The small person in the show

played by Peter Dinklage. And for if any of you hear this and

you know Peter, please beg my forgiveness.

But, anyway, they were talking, and, the the blonde

lady made a point. Emile Clarke, I believe is the actress's name.

Anyway, playing Daenerys Targaryen. And, and she made a

point, she said, and I quote, Lannister, Targaryen,

Burethion, Stark, Tyrell, they're all just spokes on a

wheel. This one's on top, then that one's on Tom, and on and on and

on it spins, crushing those on the ground. And then

Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, says to her, it's a beautiful

dream stopping the wheel. You're not the 1st person who's ever dreamt it.

And then Daenerys, the blonde lady responds, I'm not going to stop the

wheel. I'm going to break the wheel.

There are many people, in our time,

in in 2024,

but starting probably about 20 years ago, maybe even 30 now,

who had a sincere

who have a sincere and overwhelming desire to

break the machine of politics.

This goes along with our nihilistic

and self centered in some cases and

narcissistic in many cases Approach Tom Problem

Solving. It also goes to, specifically in

American context, our frustration with things that take too long

for we are an impatient people and we like to get up after it, be

done with it, and then get up after something else.

What Roosevelt was talking about in his

section there on the nature of the men who run the machine the

machine of politics in 18/83 New York and the nature of the

voters, specifically the laboring class, the working essays he called

them, who vote for the politicians

that are supported by this machine. The point that Roosevelt

was making is that all this is symbiotic

as was in his time such as it is

in ours. See, in our time, the machine of politics

still runs, and particularly in America with

only 2 parties, though you can see this in parliamentary systems,

the machine of politics is not just about Republican and

Democrat. Okay? The machine of politics isn't about the

people that you see on the billboards or on your television

campaign commercials. I could name names, but it doesn't really

matter. The people behind the machine, the people who give the

money, the people who donate. Those are the people

who put money in the machine and money is the mother's milk of

politics. It is also the gas in the car. This is

how consultants, whether or not their candidates lose, still

get paid. People were Fused by

this voters are confused by this because they believe that

they're voting for the man or the woman who is on the

ballot, and what they don't realize is they're

voting for the machine that put the man or the

woman on the ballot. And the machine is run by

men whose interests do not align with theirs.

Over the last 4 years in America, there has

been a growing understanding of the nature of the

machine behind the politician, the nature

and the thought process of the billionaires

behind our politics. Now

On both the Republican and Democrat side, there are these

billionaires. There are people who made their money in hedge funds, and

there are people who made their money, selling widgets. But both

of them would like to see the machine work

for them. And the average voter, well, they can be

damned. But the average voter now has access to

the Internet, and now has access to social media and now has

access to Google and research. The average

voter now has access to more data and information

than the average working man did in Theodore Roosevelt's time. And what

they're doing with that information is they are using it to

break the machine.

By the way, the candidates that come out of those

attempts to break the machine, the Ramaswamis,

the Readers, the Trumps,

at least in American politics. The candidates

the people that come out of that machine typically are fed

by the dollars of average people.

If you don't believe me, I once read a story in The Wall Street Journal,

this has to have been probably about 6 months ago, maybe 8,

about how, on the Republican Party, the vast majority

of the donations going not to the candidates that you see

on the Wall Street Journal or in the Washington Post, with the candidates whose names

you see in your local elections, the vast majority of those dollars

well over 50% were coming from people who were

donating $100 or less.

Small donors have power now and the

machine the machine that was once run,

by billionaires, and they are still there, don't get me

wrong, is gradually being eroded in America,

and it is being replaced. And this is a solution to a problem. It

is being replaced by a machine that is infinitely more

populist book on the left and on the political

right. This, of

course, causes consternation because when small things come

along that upend and disrupt large things,

like small media coming along and upending large media

or small donors coming in and upending larger donors,

chaos reigns, which is what we've had in American politics

for at least the last 4 presidential

election cycles. That chaos isn't

going anywhere because we're working something out fundamentally.

We're working out the breaking of the machine

and the remaking of it into something,

well, something that represents the actual working man voter,

The working man voter whose life might have tragic

consequences. Case in

point, I recently saw a picture of a person

who was photographed getting ready to go and vote,

And this person was in a wheelchair clearly

unable to walk, clearly sickly. And this person

had their hands together and was bowed in prayer.

A person living a tragic life or

maybe their life is fine. Maybe it was just a snapshot

in Tom, but understanding

that life is tragic and understanding that it cannot

be made fair by any form of government and that even

the best governments attempt to

Smooth the Path Somewhat.

I think that that is something that is understood and

appreciated by people who make 1,000 of dollars

a year more so than people

who scraped the top or skim the top off

of a hedge fund to the tune of 1,000,000,000 of dollars a

year. The people who are much closer to the

tragedies of life will probably build a more

populous machine. Will it be a better

one? Well, Teddy

Roosevelt and I would probably agree

on this. We cannot say whether it will

be good or bad, whether it will be better or worse, but we can

say that it will still, At the end

of the day, be a machine.

Alright. Well, time to turn the corner. Talk a little bit about staying on

the path here. So how do we How do we leverage

insights from Teddy Roosevelt's essays on practical politics?

And, of course, tying that into what we read in,

Republic of Plato, in episode number 90 with Tom

Libby. And we're gonna be following up this, this

episode, with our next episode, we're gonna be talking with, Libby

Unger about Woodrow Wilson's treatise,

When a Man Comes to Himself. So what

do these 3 things have in common? What do these 3 sort of

ideas, have in comment. What are we trying to explore

here at the beginning of the year, here on the podcast? Well,

couple of different things. Remember I said we're going to

talk about solutions to problems more so on this podcast this year

rather than constantly, talking about just the problems

themselves. And the biggest problem that,

Essays on Practical Politics reveals, and it is a problem that continues

on down to our time, is that we don't like the things our

leaders do. Very rarely

do you find someone who actually likes something

that a leader does. And by the way, this could be a leader in a

small business. This could be a leader in a community. This could be a leader

in politics. You know, know? And and Abraham Lincoln notoriously said,

you know, you can only, you can only, you know, make, some

of the people happy some of the time. Right? Steve Jobs once

quipped that if you wanna make everyone happy, hand out ice cream.

Right? Being a leader is inherently about making

some people happy. And then and sometimes,

those people are a large minority. Sometimes it's 49% of the

people who are unhappy and 51% of the people who are cheering you

would have your back. Well, when we don't like what our

leaders do, what are the functions Sorrells as a people

in America to get rid of those people. Well, Theodore Roosevelt

would say the function is politics. The function is the

election cycle. The function is keeping a thumb on

the administration and on the bureaucrats. And by the way,

that whole system was smaller in his Tom, but the thing that you have to

keep in mind is that even during his

time, the administrative bureaucracy was thought to be too large. We

look back on it and we go, my gosh, wouldn't it have been amazing to

live back then, if you really love freedom

or if you really love open spaces and exploration, you

could do anything back then in a way that you could can't do it now.

Well, from the perspective of people back then, there was too much government,

the same perspective that we have now.

If we don't like the things our leaders do, we need to tell them. That's

the solution. There are so many outlets to do that these

days, and we are telling them. We are yelling at them.

We are exploring those outlets. The Internet and social

media has, of course, exploded the ability to directly We

touch, and I don't mean by with our hands, but directly

impact the nature of legislation that occurs

not necessarily in DC, but in our own state

capitals, in our own towns, in our own backyards.

And then, of course, go vote. Right? Go get engaged.

Go sit in a caucus. Go figure out how votes are counted.

Myself, I used Tom, volunteered to be an election observer.

I did that for many, many years while I lived, in another state than the

one that I currently live in now. And so observing

elections gave me insight into the on the ground election

process. What's writers, what's wrong, What's good, what's

bad, and where the angles

are. Get involved. Tell your

leaders that you don't like the things they're

doing. The Jesan problem that faces us is that they don't

listen to us when we tell them that we don't like what

they're doing. And the reason why they don't listen to us is

because we're approaching very often The Problem

Wrong, or we're approaching it from an ego driven perspective.

Roosevelt actually has a piece in here that I didn't read in his essays on

practical politics about all the letters that he received,

from various members of his constituency when he was

in Albany. And, you know, he he amusedly

sort of defines these letters, and defines these

misses in these communications as coming from people who are outsiders.

Right? And, you know, he describes

that the number of men who persist I'm gonna quote directly from this. The number

of men who persisted writing one leaders of praise, abuse and advice on every

conceivable subject is appalling, and the writers are of every grade from the

lunatic and the criminal up. The most difficult to deal with are men

with hobbies. There is the Protestant fool who thinks that our liberties

are menaced by the machinations of the church of Rome and his companion idiot who

wants legislation against all secret societies, especially the Masons.

Then there are the believers in isms of whom the women's suffragists

stand out in the 1st rank. Now to the horror of my

relatives, I have always been a believer in women's rights, but I must confess I've

never seen such a hopelessly impracticable set

of persons as the women's suffragists who came up to Albany to get

legislation. They simply would not draw up their measures in proper form,

and on and on and on. If you wanna get the attention of

someone who's in politics, someone who is a political

leaders, even in your town, you need to approach

them correctly. If you don't like that

they don't listen to you and do what they want, what you want them to

do, develop an interest in parliamentary politics

and develop an interest in the nature of elections. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's sexy once every 4 years, right, Tom talk about

who's at the top of particular ticket. It's less sexy to

do the work 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

12 years beforehand to get that person to the top of a

ticket. And it all starts in your own backyard.

Finally, the last objection, the last problem that

Roosevelt offers us a solution for his essays on practical

politics is this one. I don't have time to track all

of this down. Well, Hae san, I don't have the time to pay

attention to politics. Hae san, I don't have time to pay attention to

all the nonsense going on. I vote for these people once every couple of

years or once every 4 years. Isn't that enough? Why do I have to know

parliamentary politics? Why do I have to know about the nature of elections? Why do

I have to know the policies? Why do I have to know who the donors

are? Why do I have to know all this stuff? I pay those people to

be experts to know all that stuff so that I can go off and do

the stuff that I'm an expert in. They're not coming down and learning about my

job. To wit, I say

this. You're correct. They don't come

down to you and learn your job,

But you do go up to them and tell them how to do their job

all of the time.

One of the simplest ways to battle

the I don't have time to track all of this down

idea is to listen to more podcasts like this

one, and there's several other ones that are out in the market today that could

inform you. I would normally say listen to

radio and read at least a couple of journals that are

good public policy journals, but reading has gone by the

wayside, as I know. That's why I host this that's why I host this

podcast. Podcast, listen to others like it,

where you can break down ideas into smaller chunks that are

understandable. But at an even more practical level, Stop

watching Netflix. Stop doom

scrolling through Instagram and Facebook.

Put away the dopamine high of

whatever social media platform you particularly care for and

Pick up some interest. Pick up some

caring in your local political interests.

I don't know if you know this, but in most local school board elections,

less than 2% of the available voters vote in

a local school board election. That means in an average town

of 10,000 people, less than 100 vote

in an election for school board. And

yet those are the people on that school board that are

determining what kind of education children in the schools

get. And those children in the schools become adults, and those

adults can become your coworkers, and some of them will become

your boss or your manager or your leader. Might be a really

good idea to show up for the school board elections. They

actually may matter more than who sits

in the Oval Office in Washington DC.

Just some things to think about and to take as solutions to problems that

we have during an election year 2024

and in all future election years where you will be listening to this

as we listen and as we read essays

on practical politics by Theodore Roosevelt.

And well, That's it for

me.