Robert Heinlein: Take Back Your Government!

Jerry Pournelle

This is a book for every American who wants to reclaim the political process. Are you mad as Hell and not going to take it any more? Have you tried to participate in the traditional political process only to discover that the traditional political parties have no place for you, won't listen, and don't much matter anyway? Have you turned to the Perot movement as a remedy? Do you want to see a fundamental change in the American political system?

If so, you need this book.

If you have never thought about politics, and hate the whole idea, you really need this book. As Pericles of Athens was fond of observing, because you take no interest in politics is no guarantee that politics will not take an interest inyou.

If you look to H. Ross Perot to lead the nation to salvation, you particularly need this book.

I say this in full knowledge that much of die book- indeed its very heart - seems to be badly out of date. Ironically, being "out of date" is one of die book's major values. This book was written in a very different era of American politics; in a time when ordinary people could and did participate effectively in the political scene. This was a manual to show diem how to do that There were many such manuals. This one was unique m that Robert Heinlein both had practical experience in politics and was one of the dearest (and most entertaining) writers of the era. Reading this book will be good for you, but the good news is that it's fun.

Heinlein offers a number of timeless insights, but many of his details are seriously out of date. That, however, is not a defect but a feature: because in describing how to operate in a political world that vanished during the "reforms" of the '60s and '70s, Heinlein describes a working democracy: not as a dead world of the past, but as the dynamic living world he knew and lived in and loved.

It is a world we could reclaim. A world we must reclaim. The United States went a long way down the wrongroad during the Cold War. It is time we return to more familiar territory. This book can be vkal to that return.

Democracy, Robert Heinlein says, "is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself- or it ceases to be a democracy, even if the shell and form remain." That was written in 1946, at the close of World War II, before the Cold War; before the federalization of much of American life. When we look around at the disaster area that American politics has become, it is all too clear that Robert was correct. The shell and form of American democracy remain, but much of what Robert understood about American democracy has vanished.

When Heinlein wrote, the typical professional politician was what was then known as a political boss. Most local, district, and county party leaders were unpaid volunteers. Professional political managers were distrusted. While some state legislators and congressmen were returned to office year after year, most were not, and those who were, though powerful through the seniority system, were often the butts of political jokes - and were quite aware that they could easily be turned out of office, either in a primary or a general election. It was a government by amateurs in a true sense, in that everyone had to live under the laws they passed. They worked hard, too. Heinlein could (and does) complain that members of Congress, and of die State Legislature, were underpaid and had too few perks of office; and offer the opinion that the main reason people went to their city council, or state capital, or Washington, and endured die hardships of public office, was patriotism.

It was all true in those days. Some politicians might have been motivated by greed, or a lust for power, but most thought of themselves as, and were seen by their constituents to be, public servants, sacrificing some of their productive years to the political process. Today things are different. However the professional politicians see themselves, poll after poll shows that the American people think they are a self-perpetuating elite motivated mosdy by the desire to retain power.

Since Heinlein wrote this book, most states have changed from a part-time amateur legislature of citizens who approved laws they would have to live widi and make a living under, to full-time paid professionals who spend most of their time in the state capital rather than in their home districts, exempt themselves from the laws and regulations they impose on others, and who, far from making a living under the laws they make, are paid by the state and sometimes prevented by conflict-of-interest laws from outside work. (A noted exception is, of course, lawyers, who have been allowed to retain their partnerships in law firms even if the firm does business with the government. They did that in Heinlein's day too.) Their idea of making a living is not yours.

It's doubly true of the Congress of the United States, which has multiplied its perks while invariably exempting itself from such laws as the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Wage/Hours Act, most of the reporting laws, and nearly all federal regulations. Far from a largely citizen body, the Congress has become a governing elite with high job security. Since this book was written, Congress went from an assembly of the people to an institution with 98 percent incumbency-a lower turnover than Britain's hereditary House of Lords. While private industry loses jobs, Congress multiplies its staff: there are over 30,000 "Hill Rats," as congressional staff are called in Washington. They serve 535 senators and representatives. Do you have nearly 50 people to mind details and run errands for you? Each of your legislators in Washington does, all paid with your taxes. Think about that before you contemplate running for office. Each congressman commands a political patronage machine that the old ward bosses would have envied.

Other things have changed. The budget has grown enormously. Government (federal, state, and local) now spends nearly half the money generated in this country. The national debt went from an irritation to an impending disaster. The civil service at all levels has grown well beyond anyone's ability to predict in 1946. Government, in a word, has become very big business indeed, while what we used to fear as "the big business interest" has faded into the background. I could multiply examples endlessly, but surely the point is made. Somewhere between 1946 and the present the American democracy as Heinlein knew it disappeared, to be replaced with our present system in which our local affairs are governed by Washington - a city that can't govern itself, but has no qualms about telling the rest of us how we should live.

The Opportunity

We have a new situation in this year of grace 1992 and of the independence of these United States the 216th. To say that the American people have come to distrust their government is a silly understatement. The polls show that they hate our present political system. They're mad as Hell and they aren't going to take it any more. There is a movement to take back control, and it may work. For the first time in our lifetimes there is an alternative. Millions of Americans, disgusted with politics as usual, have turned to a man who, as I write this, is still legally only an "undeclared candidate for President" - but who, as I write this, is the likely winner of the Presidency. In the state of New Jersey both houses of the legislature went from a majority by one party to a veto-proof majority of the other. As I write this we can predict that there will be at least 100 new faces among the 435 members of the House of Representatives; and it is entirely possible that there will be many more, perhaps even a majority of new faces.