Some time ago, I took issue with the use of the word “machine” by two commentators on this blog. Short version: They talked about the role of machines in the election. I said, “There are no more machines.” They said: “You’re wrong. Patronage politics lives.”
I now believe that it is time to reassert my contention. There is no more Chicago machine. There may, in fact, be no more political machines in America.
What’s a machine, you ask? Simple. Machine politics happens when politicians make promises and levy punishments on voters at an individual level, and not merely as members of an ascribed group. It isn’t machine politics to support EFCA in return for a union endorsement or union contributions. It is machine politics to tell Joe the Union Leader if he gets his local gets out a certain number of votes, he’s gonna get federal contracts steered his way.
Obviously, the boundaries are grey. They usually are. (C’mon. This blog has an “empire” tag.) But you can make a strong case that machine politics is dead unless you choose to draw the line so broadly as to make everything into machine politics.
Consider the Board of Revision of Taxes, in Philadelphia, where I write this.
In theory, its an independent organization, appointed by elected judges and funded by the school district. In practice, Republican and Democratic Party leaders give jobs away to people who work hard on election day. Machine politics! Except … uh …. the BRT was originally part of a Republican machine. (Hard as it is to imagine, many northeastern cities, like Philly and Jersey City, were once controlled by left-leaning GOP machines.) As the city became more Democratic, Democrats got control of more of the posts. A real machine shouldn’t let that happen — why would its constituents have an incentive to switch? But the Republican Party has managed to retain control over 20 of the 78 seats on the BRT and give them to the people who get out its votes despite a complete collapse in the ability of the Philadelphia GOP to, you know, get votes out. If one machine replaced another, that shouldn’t happen either. What’s going on in Philadelphia seems more like straight-up corruption rather than machine politics, conventionally conceived.
Or consider what a real machine did back in 1972, and try to imagine it happening today.
In 1972, Richard Daley the Elder could already see the writing on the wall: the days of the classic machine were coming to an end. Royko’s Boss came out in ’71. Michael Shakman began his famous suit arguing that patronage politics violated the 14th Amendment. Ralph Metcalfe defected from the machine with the wonderful quote, “It’s never too late to be black,” and managed to stay in office. His candidate for governor lost. So when a bunch of goo-goos challenged his control over the selection of candidates to the Democratic National Convention, he showed what a real machine does. They attacked the churches where the reformers organized and destroyed their records. Attacked, as in mobs and beatings. The Partido Nacional Revolucionario would have called that a porra. Richard Daley the Younger, I should add, led the porra that assaulted a Catholic Church in the 5th District. They then disrupted the election of the at-large delegates from Cook County.
Daley lost anyway, save for the at-large. He sued, and when the U.S. Supreme Court punted, he got a machine judge to seat his hand-picked slate over the elected delegates. Except that the judge couldn’t do anything, because, well, the Supreme Court had kicked the problem back into the hands of the Democratic National Committee. Daley’s case wasn’t helped by the fact that in a massive failure of vision his slate contained only one Italian last name and three Polish ones. That’d be like, well, uh … you know, lots of Irish political machines shot themselves in the head over this sort of oversight, be it Chicago’s failure to integrate Italian and Poles and African-Americans, or Boss Flynn of the Bronx trying to pretend for a stupidly long time that all these Jews and Puerto Ricans would just go away. (The Jews did. The Puerto Ricans are. But the machine went away first.)
Wrap your head around that happening in the 2012 . You can’t. It wouldn’t. Not even in places like San Antonio, where machine-like organizations still exist in a way that they’ve faded in Chicago and Philadelphia. Those cities have a problem with corruption, but I’m just not seeing the machines. (Michael Nutter is many things, including a plausible future President of the United States, but a machine politician is not one of them.) Boston, well, Boston kinda sort has a machine, sorta, but it’s weak, and survived because the Irish were smart enough to turn things over to the Italians. Cambridge has one that survives only out of apathy and indirect elections.
New York City could have replicated machine politics. It had an ethnic base and plenty corruption, while Jews and Italians were replaced by Puerto Ricans and African Americans, who were in turn displaced by West Indians, Dominicans, and Chinese.
Yeah, I know, hugely diverse immigration stream and all that. But a political entrepreneur could have built a machine on a simple West Indian-Dominican-Chinese tripod … heck, they could have built on West Indians alone.
Only they didn’t. And if you tell me that’s because West Indians don’t make good American politicians or don’t become citizens or otherwise lack the necessary chops I will be unable to contain my laughter. It’s because, I think, American institutions and political culture currently make machine politics impossible. The combination of law, free elections, and prosperity has destroyed the great American political machine.
In fact, the same combination — or at least two of the three — has also wounded the great Mexican political machine. They hang on in parts of Mexico, but generally the country’s politics resemble U.S.-style interest group politics, not the machine politics of yore. “Porras” cause riots after university soccer games; they don’t assault polling places and beat up opposition politicians. They’re also weakened in Panama. I’m not sure that I’m particularly happy about Martinelli’s victory, but it isn’t a victory for machine politics.
Now, machine politics isn’t dead in Latin America, despite some bruising. Consider “Daleyismo” in Venezuela. ¡Viva la maquina! The Nestor-Cristina team in Argentina is very good at this sort of thing. Danny Ortega is less good at it, as his need to resort to vote-stealing shows, but even the great Daley had to do that on occasion. Correa and Morales, in different ways, are trying to build machines. Dominican politics is dominated by machines, albeit not hegemonic ones … and I think you could say that Mr. Uribe’s conservatives have built there own odd sui generis electoral machine.
So machine politics lives on in América, but in America it is almost impossible for me to imagine the kind of tactics used by the Socialists-Peronists-Sandinistas-MAS-Conservatives achieving anything other than a wave of negative news stories followed by indictments.
I know less about the Old Continent. There are some machine-like things in Italy these days, although I think a new word is needed for Berlusconi’s very 21st-century political strategy. But to repeat myself, electoral machines no longer seem to exist in America.
Am I wrong? As always, I’m happy to change my mind. And just to be sure that we’re on the same wavelength, a “machine” doesn’t need to be as powerful as the Cook County Democratic Party under Richard Daley to qualify. It just needs to be able to win elections on the basis of personalistic relationship and individual patronage.
Shout out from the 2-1-5! A few scattered observations:
* The Republicans still control the Philadelphia Parking Authority, too-- which is a a surprisingly powerful organization. A few years ago, the state-level Republicans added to the fiefdom by transferring control of taxicab regulation within the City of Philadelphia from the Public Utilities Commission (PUC-- the same guys that regulate telephone, electric and water companies are the regulators of taxicabs, except now in Philly) to the Parking Authority. The Parking Authority then used its new authority to pick the pockets of businesses in the cab industry in various ways, and give away sweetheart contracts. I agree that this isn't really "machine" politics per se since there's no voting involved, but it does underscore that there are still some resilient GOP enclaves in the otherwise deep blue city.
* Delaware County, PA (western suburbs of Philly) has or until very recently continued to have a bona fide, old-school GOP machine. If you switched from the GOP to the Democrats, you very promptly get put on jury duty (this happened to me personally, and it's not at all a unique experience) and there are other petty means of harassment: trash collection, ease in obtaining building permits, and so on.
* Michael Nutter for President? Snort. I admire and respect the guy, shook his hand more than once, and wish him well. But I don't see him ever attaining a higher office unless he's able to miraculously fix the city; and this is a sadly low-probability event for a number of reasons:
-- The budget crisis. It's all about the pensions
-- The mentality that acting like the Vince of Darkness or Johnny Doc is normal behavior. BRT is just the tip of the iceberg
-- The growth-choking wage tax
-- The state legislature's hostility to the city
Posted by: Dennis Brennan | May 07, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Hi, Dennis,
Agreed on the Parking Authority. Philly excels at that sort of corruption that just barely skirts the law, without quite going over. Much rarer in New York and Boston (and suburbs); I don't know why.
Regarding suburbs: I did not know about Delaware County. I knew that a GOP machine managed to limp into the 1990s on Long Island, but it pretty rapidly disintegrated thereafter.
Regarding Nutter: local visions of politicians, I think, often vary from national ones. But I have a question. You wrote:
"The mentality that acting like the Vince of Darkness or Johnny Doc is normal behavior. BRT is just the tip of the iceberg."
Mind explaining? I lost the reference. My wife would probably get it, but I have been (probably luckily) unable to get her to read this blog. Thanks!
Posted by: Noel Maurer | June 03, 2009 at 01:07 AM
Noel- I emailed you a response to this.
Posted by: Dennis Brennan | June 10, 2009 at 11:11 AM
Found it! You got spamboxed; apologies. Hmmm. Is it postable?
Posted by: Noel Maurer | June 10, 2009 at 12:20 PM
Rather you didn't do so with my name on it, but feel free to comment on what I wrote.
Posted by: Dennis Brennan | June 10, 2009 at 05:50 PM