Long ago in the grey mists of time, I was a True Believer.
So let me tell you a story about how I learned the facts of political life.
No names will be named. But sadly, this is all so very true.
While still in high school at the end of the tumultuous 1960s I discovered I had a talent for programming computers and in those days computers were rare and the world desperately needed programmers. I was hired as a part-time employee while still in school and instantly after graduation I was offered a full-time job working for the school system.
A year or so into my job we got a new boss. It wasn’t long before he called us all (his staff of seven) into his office and introduced himself. The only part I remember is him saying, right up front: “I only ask three things from you: loyalty, loyalty, and loyalty.”
I thought it was a joke at the time. But he wasn’t joking.
This boss (who’ll be known as Boss with a capital B from here on out) seemed to be an easygoing, friendly fellow. He instinctively knew that I wasn’t the type to be ordered around, and I were far too valuable an asset to let slip away. I had it easy in that job, with good pay and flexible hours. I repaid the good treatment with performance that was pleasing to my superiors.
The Boss took a liking to me. Gradually, he invited me more deeply into his world. I think maybe he saw me as a naive blank slate -- someone he could steer to his advantage. I’m not sure. But within a year I was given the title Assistant Manager, and we would have private talks in his office after hours.
The Boss,I found out over time, was a secretive and highly ambitious man. He believed that the road to power was to be an insider, and to know more secrets than anyone else. He viewed the world as made up of two kinds of people: the smart ones (the insiders) and the rest (the outsiders) and if he had a name for the masses it would have been suckers. The insiders (let’s call them winners) were few, a privileged elite, and the suckers were many and stupid and ripe for manipulation for the benefit of the winners. What separated the two was knowledge of how the real world worked. The trick was to never let the suckers get a look behind the screen.
Now I’ve always been fascinated by reality, and I didn’t protest at any of this. I was just in my early twenties at the time. Besides, I’ve compressed many hours and days of talks into one simplistic, bald statement – he never out and out said what I told you in that last paragraph. He was much too subtle for that.
You’re not surprised to find that the Boss was heavily involved in the local politics in our county, are you? He was a smooth operator; he knew how to schmooze, and how to make other people feel good about themselves. But most of all, he knew how to conceal his true feelings perfectly behind an amiable, pleasant facade.
The Boss was married to a blond, attractive woman. I gradually got to know them both, and I liked them, and they liked me. But as the years passed by I grew restless. The technical challenges on the punch-card IBM machine had long run out and I was eager to join the brave new world of interactive computing.
The Boss was getting restless too, but he wasn’t interested in anything technical. There was turmoil on the county school board and his wife wanted to run for a position on it. The Boss was all for this, and asked me if I would help out. I was glad to say yes; particularly when I heard her talking about how badly changes were needed in the county to get our schools our of the horrible mess they were in; to focus on learning, as so on. I knew how badly real reform was needed.
I also knew from working on the inside with the Boss just what a huge gap there was between the public image that the school officials were careful to present to the world and the reality behind that image. The story was that everyone was working for the welfare of our dear children. The reality was that everyone (with a few lonely exceptions) was looking out for number one, advancing their own careers, cutting deals, and maintaining a hypocritical front so as to fool the suckers.
But I was a True Believer. I thought the system could be reformed if we just got the right people to help change it. I was sure that the Boss’s wife (whom I’ll call the Candidate from here on out) was one who sincerely wanted to change things for the better.
I worked hard for the Candidate. I did gopher jobs, passed out literature, and sometimes helped with strategy sessions. The Boss and the Candidate were impressed by my loyalty and commitment. They thought it was to them, but in fact it was just my idealism -- believing that desperately needed change could actually happen.
The Candidate won her seat on the Board; and we, all her loyal supporters, celebrated in the back room, soon joined by the Candidate and her husband. It felt really great to be on the inside of a winning crusade, even such a tiny one as this. We could change the world, one step at a time.
Having shown great loyalty I was rewarded. The Boss didn’t object to my leaving the school system and starting my own company, except he wanted it to be part-time and for me to remain part-time with the Department. He admired my little Altair after I finally got it in 1976 after an eight-month wait while the company cleared their backlog of orders for the world’s first mass-produced “PC”.
We formed our company and moved out and rented office space. We didn’t have a secretary, and so it was convenient that the Candidate was looking for a paying job too. We hired her as our secretary and started working on developing software.
I spent some private time with the Boss and the Candidate playing golf, drinking beer, and listening to them talk candidly. To my shock and disappointment (which I hid at the time) the Candidate quickly lost interest in the actual operation of the school board. The Boss never really had any. Instead, they had the fevered gleam of ambition in their eyes.
“I want to be the first woman governor of [our state]!” the Candidate said to us one night after a few beers. She meant it.
Now the Boss never wanted to be a public figure. He always wanted to be a private one. “The real power is the power behind the throne” I remember him once telling me, in so many words. They were a perfect team. They were determined to work their way up, and of course, they wanted me to help.
But I was troubled. Not only had the Candidate quickly forgotten her promises about reform, but she was an awful secretary. Slowly, it became obvious to me that although she was friendly and attractive she had no real skills except social ones. She knew how to say the right things to the right people at the right time but as for actually backing up those words with results -- that was never going to happen.
But nonetheless I got sucked ever deeper into their political games. They were both rising stars in the Democratic party in the county and rapidly expanding their horizons to the state level. I didn’t believe at first she was serious about the governor thing but she was. They began to keep lists of friends and enemies, even going so far as to ask a friend of mine to secretly spy for them at Republican events to see if any secretly disloyal Democrats might be consorting with the enemy. The purpose of these dubious shenanigans was to gain political favor with those higher up, and to build those precious lists.
I had an insider’s view of all this, and the lasting image I came away with was a long ladder leading upwards into the clouds with a line of people on it, each kissing the ass of the one above them until they could get in position to knock them off. As one person fell, the rest below them would quickly move up to close the gap and resume kissing asses and making deals. The Candidate lost little time in joining the insiders and fixers on the board; the very ones she’d been elected to defeat. They were, after all, the minions of the power brokers, the smart set of winners that led to the promised land of ever greater political power.
Along about this time I was reminded of the loyalty, loyalty, loyalty slogan. The Boss had come to trust me. He was planning a lawsuit against IBM that was designed to get him out of a certain pickle he’d gotten himself into over payment of the maintenance contract on the school’s computer system. He asked me privately if I’d be willing to testify on the stand to a certain version of the facts which simply wasn’t true.
I refused. He became angry. “So,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm (the first time I’d ever heard him express a negative emotion towards me) “you think you have integrity, do you?
“I’m not going to commit perjury for you” is all I replied.
From then on I was frozen out of the political ambitions of the Boss and the Candidate. The Boss hid his resentment of me for a time, but eventually, it broke out in many ugly ways. He not only stopped seeing me, but I was told he’d instructed his staff at the Department, all of them my friends, to not allow me to set foot inside the building where I used to work.
Loyalty, loyalty, and loyalty.
I had no more direct contact with either of them, but they popped up in the newspaper from time to time. At least the Candidate did -- the Boss remained where he wanted to be; in the shadows.
A couple of years later an old Democratic state senator left his post for health reasons, and I was stunned to see that the party had appointed the Candidate to run for his seat. In the 1970s in the South to be the Democratic candidate was virtual victory; the Republicans were so weak and hapless. Sure enough, the Candidate was soon an elected State Senator. The next logical step up was Lieutenant Governor, then Governor, then who knows? President?
I had no idea exactly how it was done, but I knew enough to imagine the backroom deals, favor swapping, and general ickiness that managed to get her that appointment. I knew the Boss was behind it all, pulling strings and making deals.
The Candidate served a term or two before I saw her name again in the headlines. This time, the news wasn’t so rosy. She was involved in some sort of scandal, and in several months’ time, as I recall, she’d resigned her seat. Within a year, I heard through the grapevine, she’d divorced the Boss but had landed on her feet in another political appointment, something like Deputy Assistant to the Administrator for Government Affairs.
The next news I stumbled across was that the Boss (following the Reagan revolution where Republicans suddenly surged in popularity in the South) had switched parties. The Republicans had welcomed their former bitter enemy with open arms, I heard. It was okay for him to be a snake in the grass, so long as he was their snake in the grass.
Loyalty, loyalty, and loyalty. The grease that makes the gears of Government grind.
As for the Candidate, it was several more years before I saw her name again, again in the headlines. It’s not good to be in the headlines when you’re the Assistant Deputy something-or-other.
It was, of course, another scandal; this time in the department where she worked. She was involved directly and faced charges of corruption, but somehow managed to escape prosecution (it helps to have the right friends) and resigned from “public service” forever.
At least I assume. I haven’t heard about either of them in decades.
But I should here thank them both, the Boss and the Candidate, for the crash course they gave me in how politics works, and how the real insiders, the winners, cut their deals while maintaining their carefully constructed public facade of caring about the people they are supposed to be representing -- also known as the suckers.
Thanks, you two. I’ll never forget you. I remember you every time I go into a voting booth, which I still do, in spite of the lessons you taught me.
But I will never be a True Believer again.