Polly Dogood

Upon the Raising of the Next Generation

Wherein the Author, the Election being won, thanks the Elders who recruited the Victors, recalls how young the Founders were, and begs the new Majority to put at its Head the Young and the Unbought, who have already shown they can meet the Moment.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

The Votes are counted, or nearly, and the Congress no longer belongs to the President. Some of you voted gladly. Some of you held your Noses. Both of you are owed the same Thing now: a Congress that fights for you. And a Congress fights only as well as those at the Head of it.

Let me first give Credit where it is owed. The Elders of the Party went out and found good Candidates, and many of those Candidates won in Places no Almanack would have predicted. That was wise Work, patiently done. It is no Insult to say that the Work of recruiting a Victory is not the same as the Work of leading one. A good Gardener is not obliged to eat every Apple himself.

So I come to the Question every new Majority must answer in its first Weeks: who shall sit at the Head of the Table? My Answer is the Young, and the Unbought. I shall give my Reasons, and as is my Habit I shall give them from History, since History has already argued the Case better than I can.

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How Young the Founders Were

We picture the Founders as old Men in white Wigs, because their Portraits were mostly painted after they had grown old. When they did the Founding, they were not old.

Mr. Jefferson was thirty-three when he drafted the Declaration. Mr. Madison was thirty-six at the Convention of 1787, where he did more than any Man to shape the Constitution. The youngest Delegate there, Mr. Dayton of New Jersey, was twenty-six. The Marquis de Lafayette was made a Major General by the Congress at nineteen. A Republick was invented, in the main, by People who would today be told to wait their Turn.

The oldest Delegate at that Convention was my own Grandpapa, Dr. Franklin, at eighty-one. Here is the Part I most want you to know. He came, gouty as he was, and he spoke when it mattered. But he did not carry the Floor himself. When he had something to say, he wrote it out, and Mr. James Wilson, a younger Man, stood and read it to the Room. Grandpapa gave his Wisdom; younger Legs did the standing. That is the proper Place of the Elder in a Republick: not at the Head of the Table, but at the Elbow of whoever sits there, close enough to be heard.

General Washington understood it too. Twice he had Power in his Hands and twice he set it down: when he resigned his Commission in December of 1783, and when he declined a third Term in 1796. The World thought him remarkable for it. It is the most important Thing a Leader can learn to do, and the hardest.

We learned lately what it costs when the Moment is missed. In March of 2020, in a School Gymnasium in Detroit, with three younger Leaders standing behind him, Mr. Biden said, "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else." It was a wise thing to say, and the Country took him at his Word. But a Bridge is meant to be crossed, not lived on. He kept to the Road until a Debate at the end of June 2024, and he stepped aside on the 21st of July, 107 Days before the Election. His Successor had a Season to make her Case where she should have had a Year, and the whole Country has paid for it since. He was a decent Man, and he did the right Thing in the End. The Lesson is that the right Thing has a Season, and the Season does not wait.

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The House Has Done This Before

Lest anyone say it is not done, I remind them that it has been done often, and the Republick thrived for it.

In 1811 Henry Clay of Kentucky walked into the House of Representatives for the first Time and was chosen Speaker the same Day. He was thirty-four. The Members had seen enough of him to know he could fight, and they did not make him wait.

In March of 1910 the House had a Speaker of seventy-three, Mr. Cannon, who ran the Chamber as his own Parlour through his Grip on the Rules Committee. A Congressman from Nebraska, Mr. George Norris, forty-eight, gathered the Insurgents of the Speaker's own Party and joined them to the Opposition, and by 191 Votes to 156 they took that Grip away.

In January of 1975, the new Members who had come in after Watergate looked at the old Chairmen who had sat on their Committees for Decades and removed three of them. The Seniority System never fully recovered, and the Republick did not miss it.

None of these was a Revolt against the Old as such. Each was a Revolt against a Habit: the Habit of waiting, of deferring, of being cordial to those wrecking the Place. That Habit is the Enemy of every Majority that means to accomplish anything.

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Why the Young, and Why Now

In September of 1789 Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Madison from Paris that "the earth belongs in usufruct to the living," and that the Dead "have neither powers nor rights over it." He meant that no Generation should bind the next. I mean something smaller and more urgent. The People who will live longest with what this Congress does, the Debts and the Rents and the Weather and the Wars, ought to have the most to say about it.

The Young do not need to be told the Stakes. They pay them. They pay the Rent that eats so much of a Wage, the Debts for an Education they were told was the Ladder, the Insurance that does not insure. They do not need a Briefing on the Price of Things. They need someone at the Head of the Table who has felt it.

And they have already shown what they can do. This Season, Candidates who were young, or new, or both, went into Districts that were written off, held their Meetings in every County, spoke plainly, refused to be polite to Tyranny, and won. They did not wait to be anointed. They are the Proof. A Party that has just been saved by its Fighters would be very foolish to put them at the back of the Room.

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Why the Unbought

On the second of June, 1787, Mr. Wilson read to the Convention a Paper of Grandpapa's. In it he warned of "two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money." Put them together in one Man, he said, and that Man will be moved by both. Grandpapa wanted the Chief Magistrate to serve without Pay, so that no one would seek the Office for the Money. The Convention did not agree with him. I have come to think he was right in the Principle, if not in the Remedy.

Corporations have been forbidden to give Money directly to Candidates for federal Office since the Tillman Act of 1907. For a Century they found side Doors: the Political Action Committee, the Bundler, the Dinner. Then, on the 21st of January, 2010, the Supreme Court took the Wall down. In Citizens United, by five Votes to four, it held that Corporations may spend without Limit on Elections, so long as they do not hand the Money to the Candidate himself. Within two Months a lower Court applied the same Reasoning to unlimited Gifts pooled for that Spending, and the Super PAC was born. The Corporation now has a Door as wide as the Billionaire's, and the Billionaire has the widest Door of all.

Here is my Point, and I make it of no one in particular. A Party that means to take on the Billionaires, to stop them buying our Elections, our Newspapers, our Courts, our Wars, our Opinions and our good Names, cannot be led by People whose Campaigns they paid for. It is not that such Leaders are wicked. It is that no one will believe them, and in Politicks, not being believed is the same as losing. The Leader the Moment wants is one who can say to the richest Man in the World, "You did not pay for me," and be taken at his Word.

Many of the new Members can say it. Some refused Corporate Money this Cycle and won anyway. That is not a Disqualification for Leadership. It is the first Qualification.

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A Word to the Elders, and to the Victors

To the Elders: you are needed, more than you know. The young will make Mistakes you have already made, and you can spare them the Cost. Take Grandpapa's Seat. Write the Speech; let someone younger stand and read it. History remembers Washington for the Day he set Power down at least as well as for any Day he held it.

To the Victors: remember what you were sent to do, and remember for whom. Mr. Jefferson said in his First Inaugural, in 1801, that the Will of the Majority is to prevail, but "that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect." You have the Majority. Govern for the many, with Respect for the few, which is a thing this Country has lately gone without. Fight, plainly and without apology, but fight by the Rules you mean to restore.

And to all of you who held your Noses: you have done your Part. Now hold them to theirs.

P.S. Grandpapa retired from Business at forty-two so that he might be useful to the Publick, and spent the next forty Years being exactly that. He never once complained that the Young were in a Hurry. He was usually the one hurrying them.