"Robert A. Heinlein - Take back your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

during this training period need not exceed a dollar a month. At the end of
that time you are a politician.
I mean it. You will have become acquainted with your local officeholders
and political leaders, you will have discovered where several of the bodies
are buried, you will have taken part in one local or national campaign and
received your first blooding in meeting the public. You will find that you are
now reading the newspapers with insight as to the true story behind the
published story. You will have grown up about ten years in your knowledge of
what makes the world go 'round.
You will either have experienced the warm glow of solid accomplishment
that comes from realizing that you performed a necessary part in a
successful campaign for a man or an issue, or you will have taken part in the
private post-mortem in which you and your colleagues analyze why you lost
and what to do about it next time. (The answer is usually to start your
precinct organization earlier, with special reference to getting your sure votes
registered and to make sure they are dragged to the polls.)
You will feel that you can win next time and probably you will. Politics for
the volunteer fireman is not one long succession of lost causes-far from it!
But the point at which you will realize that you are in fact a politician with a
definite effect on public life is the time when your friends and neighbours start
asking your advice about how to mark their ballots. And they will. Perhaps
not about presidential nor gubernatorial candidates, but they will ask. and
take your advice about lesser candidates and about the propositions on the
ballot
You may discover in the course of the first few months that you are in the
wrong dub, or even in the wrong party. This does not matter in the least
insofar as your political education is concerned. In fact it is somewhat of an
advantage to make a mistake in your first affiliation; you will learn things
thereby which you could never possibly learn so well or so rapidly if you had
found your own true lodge brothers on your first attempt. It does not matter
by what door you enter politics. If you have belonged to the party wrong/or
you, by habit or tradition, a few months of active politics will disclose the fact
to you. You can then reregister and cross over, bringing with you experience
and solid conviction you could hardly have acquired any other way.8
If the trouble lies in your having fallen first into the hands of a gang of
unprincipled machine politicians, the mistake is still a valuable one, for you
will discover presently that there is a reform element in your party, unaffiliated


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with the Machine. You can join them, taking with you a knowledge of the
practical art of vote getting which reformers frequently never acquire.
You will be invaluable to your new associates. Most of the techniques of
vote getting are neither dishonest nor honest in themselves, but the
machines normally know vastly more about such techniques than do the
reform organizations. The honest organizations can afford to copy at least
90% of the machine techniques. It is curiously and wonderfully true that a
volunteer, reform organization can use the machine techniques much more
effectively than the Machine does, with fewer workers and less money. It is
like the difference between the ardour of unselfish love and the simulated