Over on NYTimes.com this morning, the national political correspondent @ShaneGoldmacher has a splendid take on the mechanics of Donald Trump’s current political apparatus. The tantalizing headline: ‘Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a Modern-Day Party Boss’
Seems our ex-President has been raising more money than even the RNC itself, and that GOP candidates everywhere – so desperate are they for Trump’s nod, lest he turn elections against them with a sneering thumbs-down – are being made to dance like puppets on strings.
Lately, watching the marginalization of Democrats (and chronically so in Tennessee) I have actually begun to miss some of the political bosses of old who shaped and guided not only politics in their respective realms but a more effective organization within their jurisdictions.
I have studied them. Their names today, of course, evoke a mixture of opinions and emotions: William Tweed of Manhattan’s Tammany Hall, Richard Daley (the elder) in Chicago, James A. Farley in New York State, among others. Minor corruption sometimes intruded, yes, but their machines had staying power for reasons important to voting constituents. These won elections, and for candidates far more numerous than just the bosses themselves.
Trump may fancy himself to be in their ranks, but he is not one of these. He may be getting the repetitive media attention of our moment, but there are at least three important differences.
1. The old bosses were about winning elections, not losing them. For all his showmanship, smoke and mirrors, Trump is currently an ousted loser. So, too, is his tiresome campaign of lies about the 2020 election, which he lost.
2. Trump’s apparatus is much more selfish in its essential purpose. It is ultimately about one person – restoring himself to power – redeeming his reputation if no one else’s.
3. The bosses of old got things done. It was commonly said of Mayor Richard Daley that, “Chicago is a city that works.” Winter snow that might paralyze other cities was cleared from streets efficiently, and the trash got picked up from the alleyways on schedule. Farley, a top soldier for FDR, put people to work as the Postmaster General.
Trump may sit on a throne like a pharaoh in Florida now, as the stream of desperate Republican candidates bow and cater to his whims, but his ‘Mar-a-Lago machine’ serves one person only.
Patronage in the form of jobs and top-down control of the party nominating processes kept the old machines humming. Civil service and primary elections (rather than nominating conventions) smashed them. Reform, huh? But are we better off?
Trump is less Boss than he thinks.