Tribute to the ‘Old Pols’
hey were fighters and brawlers. They learned their trade pounding the pavements and knocking on the doors of the row homes wherein the people lived. They sat in the local taverns, drank some beers and listened to what the patrons were saying. The smoked cigars and consumed hard liquor and the back rooms in which they met smelled of the sweet odor of smoke and booze. The had nicknames like “Da Kingfish,” “The Little Flower,” “Hizzoner” and “Big Frank” and they were loved and respected by the people simply because they were the people and they never forgot that they came from the people. The were the old-time politicians, the “Pols.” They were a kind unto themselves and when the last one died, the glory days of American politics passed away as well. Oh, there may be some like them out there, but not enough to really matter.
Put today’s political leaders up against them and there is no comparison. Today’s leaders are the kind that bring pen knives to gun fights. Today’s political leaders have lost sight of the things that the Old Pols took as gospel to be successful in the game, and it all has to do with the people.
In the great American Broadway musical, “The Music Man,” Professor Harold Hill schools his fellow salesmen with five important words: “Ya gotta know the territory!”
Today’s political leaders just don’t “know the territory.” So just what is the political territory? Simply put, it’s the constituency and while the press has replaced “constituency” with “demographics,” they both mean the same, the people who vote.
What the modern political leader seems to be unaware of is that the constituency is fluid. It moves based on two important factors, the mobility of the people and the age of the people. As citizens move about in both cities and suburbs and, as citizens go through the aging process, the territory changes, and with that change comes a change in the voter’s allegiance to one party over another. This fluidity is just the natural political order of things and if the political leaders fail to get it, they have lost the battle before it even starts.
Today’s political leaders are not fighters in the sense that politics is, by nature, rough and tumble. Back in the day, the Old Pols would never give up the race, no district or town was “unwinnable” as far as they were concerned. They fought for every vote until the last vote was counted and, even then, the fought a little more. Not so today! Now the leaders look at the statistical probability of the vote count and if it looks to them like they cannot win they declare the race a lost cause, sometimes before they even know who the other party’s candidate will be. Of course, they must make it look like they are in the battle, so they nominate a “sacrificial lamb” and push that candidate into the political meat grinder with little money and a lot of lip service.
Finally, they fail to understand the words of House Speaker Tip O’Neil when he said, “All politics is local.” What the Speaker meant was to be successful in the game, politicians need to understand it is a “fromthe-ground-up” process. It starts with the people, moves on to the ward leaders and the precinct captains and then to the leaders. Once that system breaks down there is confusion and chaos and the party ends up rowing against the tide, and as the tide becomes stronger and stronger, the boat in which they sit will be strewn into the rocks and sink, one piece of wood at a time.
The old time Pols understood all of this and, yes, some were flawed, but they rarely lost sight of the fact that the people, the fight and the process was the only way to change a candidate into a winning officer holder.