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A politician . . . one that would circumvent God.—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder—not a straight one in it.—Wendell Phillips, 1864.
It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.—Francis Bacon, 1605.
The good of man must be the end of the science of politics.—Aristotle, circa 340 B.C.
Politics is not an exact science.—Otto Von Bismarck, 1863.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.—Horace Greeley, circa 1860.
Ed Flynn is a tall, smooth, peaceable fellow who lives at 2728 Hudson Parkway, The Bronx, N.Y. To some of his chums it would come as a matter of no surprise to hear he had jumped off a roof.
Ed Flynn has the titular responsibility of electing all possible Democrats—good, medium and terrible Democrats—to all possible offices in the land, in one of the toughest years in American history, at a time of considerable national dissatisfaction with the Administration's war effort. But the grind on Ed Flynn comes here: if the Democrats lose he will get all the lumps; if the Democrats win he will get no more reward than a character who brings back kittens to a man who left them to drown.
He is chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a job which he took over practically his own dead body. After the 1940 Democratic convention, President Roosevelt offered him the post many times—he turned it down every time. One Sunday in August, the President telephoned from Hyde Park, asked him to come up. When he left, Mrs. Flynn warned: "Now remember, you're not going to take the job." Ed Flynn said flatly that this was one thing that even his great & good friend FDR couldn't talk him into. When he entered the house on his return, his wife said: "You don't have to tell me what happened. I know by that silly grin on your face."
Deep Purple. The migraine that Ed Flynn has is almost enough to fracture his skull. None of it is of his own making. But the problems that face the Democratic Party in the 1942 elections are many and grave.
> Popular dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war up till now. This is as broad as it is deep—not so much the lack of alert at Pearl Harbor or the bitterness of Bataan, or even the fire-gutted Normandie, as the flood of officially inspired uncertainty on production, on the draft, on rubber, on gas rationing, on the performance of U.S. planes; as the spectacle of bickering between Army & Navy; as production tie-ups due to inadequate Government planning; as manpower wastage due to lack of Government policy; as delay in inflation control. (Wrote James Loeb Jr., secretary of the Union for Democratic Action, in the New Republic: "The elections are ahead of us. A few military victories late in October would help, although Colonel McCormick would certainly say that the President had planned it that way just to spite him.")
> The consistent offense to millions of Americans of Washington speeches charging them with complacency and apathy, although the people have shown by every index that they were far ahead of the Administration in willingness to meet the price of war.