Chapter 2. Where to start?

“Scoop the bucket!”

Bukker Washington, who has taught people all his life how they can help themselves, loved telling the story of a sailboat that fell into calm off the coast of South America. After many days of calm, the sailors of the sailboat, severely suffering from a lack of fresh water, noticed a steamer approaching them, and signaled to him “Give us water, we die of thirst!”. What they signaled in response: "Scoop a bucket!". Calm found a sailboat near the confluence of the Amazon into the ocean, there was fresh water around, which none of the thirsty crew could have imagined.

In a policy get this way.

To get started, take a telephone directory and find there the phone of any organization of the political party whose voter you are. If you do not support any of the parties, then choose the one that impresses your political views the most. No matter what kind of party it will be, for example, take the Republican. In the phone book, for example, you will find: the district committee of the Republican Party, the Association of Republican Clubs, the Society of Republicans, and so on. Call one of these organizations. Give them your name and address, and tell them that you want to contact the local political club of your party. You will most likely be asked in which administrative district you live. Surely, you will answer that you do not know, I’m even willing to bet that you don’t know if you are a typical American. A voice will grumble street names, referring to the map, and then say something like: "Marjorie, give me a folder on the 13th district."
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“What do you need to know?” Marjorie will ask. She remembers all the documents in this folder by heart, because she printed them. She is the secretary of the party committee, and can be one of two things: either a completely incorruptible patriot of her country, or a corrupt political professional. In either case, she knows who represents her party in the 13th district.

You will be given the name, address and telephone number of the local politician, who is likely to be the secretary of the local political club. In addition, they can give you the address, date and time of the meeting of the political club, if it is so large as to have a permanent headquarters.

A local political club can be a full-fledged branch of the party, with a solid office in the business district, and an office manager behind the counter, combining, in fact, the political club, the local branch of the party, and the campaign headquarters; or it may exist mainly in the imagination of the secretary of the club, meeting only during the election campaign, at home with one of the club members.

The next thing you have to do is call the secretary of the political club. If the party organization is working well, he may call you himself, maybe even on the day of your first call. He was already called by the same Marjorie, saying to him: “Jim, I have a new client for you, write down his phone number”. Or she can say “our new hope”, if there is still no political cynicism. It will also add your data to the card index, check whether you are already registered as a party voter, and add you to the party list mailing list. After that, you will start receiving one or more party newspapers — free ones, even though they are usually worth the price. In the course of time, you will receive propaganda literature from those candidates for the elections who have the necessary contacts at party headquarters.

Now you will begin to gain knowledge about politics, even though you yourself are not actively participating in it. And note: so far you have not spent a penny on politics. Even when you actively start to engage in political activities, your costs for it will not exceed five to ten cents a day. Of course, a politician will always be happy to see a citizen who wants to confirm his political views with donations, but this is not necessary, although it is not an uncommon phenomenon compared to a citizen confirming his political views with real work, such as bypassing voters and sending letters. Some of the best and most respected politicians I have ever met had to be provided with money for lunch at a cafe so that they could work all day without going home for lunch.

I knew a retired church minister who received such a meager pension that she was barely enough to feed him and his sick woman bedridden to his wife. Nevertheless, this man became the chairman of the district committee and the actual leader of the ruling party in the metropolitan area, where more than three million people lived, although he was so poor that he could not afford to go to breakfast and lunch with other politicians. He could not afford to donate to party funds, but he did not receive any of these funds. On politics, he did not earn a penny.

How was he useful to the party? His honesty, patriotism and the desire to achieve what he considered fair. And this made him the head of the party department in the central district of the central state, although he was over seventy and he was poor.

Perhaps I digress. But in this book there will be many more similar lyrical digressions, as immediate as the children's scrawl on the margins of the pages of a boring textbook. Or perhaps these digressions are the most important. In politics, it is difficult to separate the essential from the non-essential. For example, Charles Evans Hughes did not become US President due to the fact that the campaign manager did not establish relations with the head of the committee of his own party in the state of California, and did not bother the presidential candidate to meet with him in one of the political events. The head of the state party was offended and stopped paying any attention to the election campaign in the state. As a result, it was in California that Mr. Hughes missed a thousand and a half votes, which would be enough for him to become the fifth US president and rule America during World War I instead of Wilson. The story could go a completely different way. Perhaps, unlike Wilson, Hughes would join the League of Nations, Hitler would not be allowed to come to power, World War II would not exist, and your nephew, who died in Okinawa, would be alive. Of course, now we will never know what would be the consequences of Hughes winning the election. But what we know for sure is that a half thousand votes were able to influence the entire world history. But they amounted to less than one hundredth of a percent of the total number of votes in those elections.

One acting political club can collect as many votes for the party as would be enough to decide the outcome of those presidential elections. And this political club can be exactly the one in which you are a member. That is why you should immediately call the secretary of the local political club. Perhaps, with your political work, someday you will prevent the Third World War!

Of course, the secretary of the political club will be delighted. Even if he is associated with professional policy: a conscientious volunteer who wants to work and is valued more than money there. And if this is a political club of exactly this kind of sales, then after a while you will be offered a payment for political work: $ 5 for work at each polling station during the election campaign on the West Coast, $ 5 per election day in the center of the country, and full pay for the entire duration of the election campaign, including the month before and the month after - on the East Coast.

(These rates do not apply specifically to the Republican or the Democratic parties, they are characteristic of the entire professional policy in general).

Do not take money, work for free. With this, of course, you surprise those who offer you a fee, but then you reinforce your party authority every time you refuse money for your political work.
Whatever your local political club, you will be welcomed into it with open arms. You will even cause some surprise in a higher party organization — by offering your assistance to the party in “peacetime”, and not just before the elections, which is surprising to them. Recovering from confusion, they did their part - they tied you up with a local party boss. In political organizations they are accustomed to the fact that volunteers offer them their help right during the elections, and they know that among such “volunteers” there are quite a few cunning people who want, in exchange for their help, to get a post in the government of the winning party, and at the same time to light up with famous politicians at various political events. So if you called the party headquarters during the elections, you would, of course, be happy to be involved in the work, but at first you would be wary - until you show yourself as a bona fide volunteer, and not just another job seeker in government. This is typical of political clubs of all times and peoples.

If your local club is not affiliated with those who make money on politics, its secretary will be all the more happy to meet you, although it may not be as sophisticated in social life as his professional colleague. Such a political club is usually in a state of constant lack of funding, and for him a new volunteer, not shunned by work, is manna from heaven.

The secretary of the club itself is overwhelmed with work. If you want, you can help him by becoming chairman of the club, sharing with the secretary caring for office rent, postal expenses, paying employees, and ensuring the presence of club members at meetings. The secretary will surely entrust you with work for at least one polling station (which will cause you no less anxiety than marriage - too much responsibility that fell suddenly on you), and will be happy to share with you your concerns. You, in turn, will learn a lot.

Two more scenarios remain after you call the party headquarters. First, there is no branch of your party in your district. In this case, you are likely to be asked to come straight to headquarters and get acquainted with other party voters living in your neighborhood. Before the next elections, you will be able to organize a local political club together with them. This is not difficult at all, I will explain in the following chapters how to do this.

It may be that in the telephone directory there will be no organizations of your party at all. This happens in the smallest towns or villages. If you live in such a place, you probably know at least one member of your party. This is probably the local judge who spent one term in the state senate, and since then has been boasting about it right and left.

Call him. Tell him you want to help his party. Perhaps this old talker will quickly get tired of you - it does not matter, the main thing is that you are happy about it. As well as all its voters, especially those of them who wish to help the party. He may even invite you to dine with him at the hunting club, discussing the terms of cooperation. Or he can invite you to this office. But he definitely will not reject your offer to work for the party. After all, you will help him personally! Let him think so — until he realizes that he cannot order you. But by that time, you yourself will become a local politician, and he cannot do anything about it. (Here are just the fingerprints on the handle of the knife sticking out of your back, for some reason, they look a lot like the judge's fingerprints!).

So, whatever the variant of events in your case, now you are in politics. With just one phone call, you started your political career. For at least a few months, stay at the political club, or the branch of the party where you entered, attend all meetings, and help to do the work. Do not shy away from such a routine as sending letters, assisting in organizing meetings, checking voter lists, and distributing party literature. All this activity will take you a couple of evenings a month, and your expenses will not exceed a dollar a month. This period of study will continue for a year or half a year, at the end of this term you will be a ready-made politician.

And indeed it is. After all, you met with the staff of the local office of your party, its political leaders, learned many details of the internal cuisine of political activities, took part in one election campaign of a local or national scale and filled their first cones at meetings with voters. You suddenly find yourself reading political articles in a newspaper, knowing what they are silent about and what is actually going on behind the scenes of the political struggle. You will incredibly expand your understanding of the mechanisms that drive human society.

After a successful election campaign in support of a candidate or law, you will feel proud of what you have achieved. If the campaign fails, after its completion you will take part in a “debriefing”, where together with your political colleagues you will discuss the reasons for your defeat, and how you will have to act next time. (The answer usually lies in the fact that the election campaign must begin to organize earlier, paying special attention to register those who exactly vote for your party, not forgetting to ensure their attendance at the elections).

You will feel that you will be able to win the next time, and it probably is. Politics for a volunteer is not a continuous series of failures, not at all!

But the true moment, when you feel that you are a real politician, and have a definite influence on public life, will come when your friends and neighbors start asking you for advice for whom to vote. And they will definitely start. They will probably not ask you for advice on who they will elect for the presidency or governor, but they will definitely ask you for lower positions and candidates for nomination as a party candidate.

If you are in the wrong unit of the party, or even in the wrong party, you will understand it in the first few months. But this is not so important - at least for your policy training. It is even useful to make such a mistake: you will learn something that you would never have been able to learn so well and so quickly, after hitting the first attempt in the political environment that suits you completely. No matter what door you enter politics. Realizing that you did not get there, you can get out of a political organization that does not suit you and go to another one, taking with you the accumulated experience and achievements that you would hardly have received in another political organization that suits you.

If it turns out that you have contacted the organization of unprincipled corrupt political professionals, this mistake will only benefit you, because after a while you will find out that there is a reform movement in your party, not connected with professionals, to which you can join. carry with them my knowledge of the art of obtaining votes at any price, often completely unfamiliar to the participants of reform movements.

For your new companions you will be priceless. Most ways to get votes are neither fair nor dishonest. However, as a rule, political professionals know much more about them than reformers. A good party organization can afford to use at least 90% of these methods. And, surprisingly, among volunteers, these methods often work much more efficiently than professional politicians, with less effort and money. There is a difference between the fervor of true love and the feigned passion of a prostitute, and voters feel it.

So let's summarize how to become a politician. First, take the telephone directory and find your party there. Secondly, call there and go to your local political club. Thirdly, sign up to a political club, attend all of its meetings, and work in it as a volunteer for several months. After this period, do what your conscience tells you. You will already know enough to understand who you are with and what you want to achieve in politics.

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4