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more difficult and that you must work several times as hard and be much more alert if you are to have an
honest government.
As an amateur, unpaid, volunteer politician interested in certain reforms, don't expect any real help
TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT!
Robert A. Heinlein
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from the churches even in accomplishing the moral objectives of the churches, or you will be due for a
terrible disappointment.
Women in Politics16
We were told, when Votes-for-Women was new, that women would bring higher moral standards and
would eliminate the graft and corruption which the nasty old men had tolerated.
Women have had an effect - they caused the installation of a powder room in the Senate's sacred halls;
they changed the atmosphere of conventions from that of a prize fight to something more like a college
reunion, and they broadened the refreshments at political doings from a simple diet of beer and pigs
knuckles to a point where the menu now includes ice cream and cake, little fancy sandwiches, coffee,
and wine cooler. The change in refreshments is a distinct improvement; I don't like pigs knuckles.
They have also brought political corruption to a new low.
Whoops! Easy, girls - please! Quiet down. There are exceptions to all rules-you may be the exception
to this one. That is for you to determine. Judge yourself.
A great many women are willing to go to hell in a wheel barrow. Their husbands may be politically just
as dishonest but the gentle sex are usually willing to sell out at a lower price. They go in for cut-rate
corruption. If you file for office, or become the manager of a candidate, you will quickly be besieged by
telephone calls from women who want to help in your campaign. They sound like enthusiastic volunteers;
you will find very quickly that they are political streetwalkers who will support any candidate and any
issue, without compunction, for a very low price.
Brush them off, but politely - a practical politician should never go out of his way to make anyone sore;
your purpose is to win elections, not arguments. Let the opposition hire them. They are hardly worth the
low price they charge, even to him. Later on in the campaign you will find that he hired one of them a little
sooner than you had expected; she worked as an unpaid volunteer all through the campaign in your office
and turned in nightly reports to the opposition.
Don't let it throw you. As a politician you must learn to expect such little disappointments. And don't let
it shake your faith in human nature. If you take the trouble to count up you will find that you know many
more people who are certainly honest than the number who are just as certainly crooked. The crooks
just seem more numerous because they get in your hair more.
I am inclined to believe, although I am not sure, that the average difference in political honesty between
men as a group and women as a group in this country is actually considerable and not just a matter of a
lower pay scale for corruption on the part of women. As a result of punching thousands of doorbells and
talking with many, many men and women I am of the opinion that women usually know less about
political issues than men and consequently are less inclined to realize that political issues are of moral
consequence. This probably results in part from the fact that most women, in their daily occupations, are
not thrown out into the world to the same extent as their men folk and consequently never really find out
what makes the wheels go around.17
Furthermore, the husband is inclined to encourage the little woman to remain in ignorance; it gives him a
chance to show off at home how much he knows without betraying just how little it is - since it is still
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more than she knows.
In any case, I have heard hundreds of times, in campaigning from door to door, this remark: "Oh, I leave
TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT!
Robert A. Heinlein
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everything of that sort up to my husband!" And she does, too - she doesn't know a filibuster from first
base and she thinks an alderman is something to hang clothes on.
So, when somebody tips her off that she can pick up a few dollars in a campaign year by a little light
work in her neighborhood, she is ripe for it, gullible, willing to work for low wages, and so naive she
doesn't know that it's loaded. It won't even worry her to work for the candidate George is voting against,
because she does not think it matters. She can work in a dozen campaigns and never find out anything
about men nor issues; she just knows that State Senator Slotmachine is such a nice man and here is some
literature about him and would you like to have a car sent around to take you to the polls?
Slotmachine is a nice man, too - he's an old hand in this business; his public personality is a work of art.
You would enjoy having dinner with him.
After a while, if she is bright enough to mark a sample ballot, she does notice a few things, but it does
not wise her up to what she is doing; it simply makes her utterly cynical about politics. She becomes
convinced that the shoddy business she has been associated with is the only brand of politics in existence.
Nothing will change her junior-size mind on the subject and she is forever lost to your side.
So don't hire her and don't bother to try to convert her. The women volunteers who work for you, free,
can get ten votes to the one she can round up for Slotmachine.
All through it she remains a good wife and mother and a respected member of the P.T.A. You can't tell [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]