“I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”
Donald Trump, of course, is not the first American to use his public office as a private trough, and he will surely not be the last (although he does seem unique in the extent, vulgarity and avariciousness of his greed). Why, just last summer – July 16th, to be precise – a jury of his peers convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) of bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. He is scheduled to be sentenced in January.
My all-time favorite, though, is George Washington Plunkitt.
Plunkitt, whose words of wisdom the journalist William O. Riordon collected in a wonderful little book called Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, was a New York City Democratic politician who held a variety of offices for his entire adult life. Indeed, writes Riordon, “In 1870, through a strange combination of circumstances, he held the places of Assemblyman, Alderman, Police Magistrate and County Supervisor and drew three salaries at once – a record unexampled in New York politics.” He was 27 years old.
Beginning as a cart driver and then a butcher boy, he quickly became a millionaire. He had his hands in just about every cashbox he could fit them, but his major source of lucre was real estate. Some things never change.
Plunkitt lays out his philosophy right at the beginning: Chapter 1, “Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft:”
“Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I’ve made a big fortune out of the game, and I’m getting’ richer every day, but I’ve not gone in for dishonest graft – blackmailin’ gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc. . . .There’s honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works.”
He might learn, he explains, that the city is about to build a park or some other public improvement, and so he quietly buys up the all the land he can get his hands on in the proposed neighborhood – land, he is quick to point out, that nobody had the least interest in before. “Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’ honest graft. . . . and I’m lookin’ for it every day in the year.”
I could go on. In 1883 President Chester A. Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which required most federal government jobs to be awarded on merit, not political patronage. Plunkitt called the new law, “the curse of the nation. . . . What’s the use of workin’ for your country anyhow,” he asked? “There’s nothin’ in the game.” One of Donald Trump’s primary goals is to gut the Civil Service.
Tammany Hall was a thoroughly corrupt machine. And yet it did much good. Its base was the city’s millions of poor immigrants, whom it worked to assimilate, employ, house, and protect from the financial, industrial, and discriminatory excesses of the late 19th century. Plunkitt railed against the Civil Service Act as much because of its economic impact on his constituents as because of its limits on his “opportunities.” For him, “honest graft,” an oxymoron if ever there was one, meant using his position to improve the lives of his constituents as well as his own.
That piece seems to be missing from the former president’s repertoire. Plunkitt might admire Trump’s chutzpah for hawking the Bible for $99, but he would be appalled watching him keep all the money for himself. Plunkitt valued the lives of the poor and the immigrants, not just for their patronage, but because he was one of them. And George Washington Plunkitt, unlike Donald Trump, could make you laugh.
• For those who asked about the 442nd Infantry Regiment, the Nisei unit I mentioned in my last post, I recommend Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown (who also wrote The Boys in the Boat).