Keep Your Roots Down! Even though you rise to national party chairmanship, remain a doorbell-pushing precinct worker in some precinct somewhere.

Notes

Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D. Introduction to the Notes

One attempts to improve the work of a master with some trepidation; but the job had to be done. Mr. Heinlein wrote this book in 1946. We had just ended a great war, and confidently expected things to go back to more or less what they had been before the War and the Great Depression. Much had changed, and no one knew that better than Robert Heinlein; but not even he knew just how profound the change had been, and what changes were to come.

In 1940, Washington, D.C., was a small Southern Border town. There was no air conditioning, and Washington was uninhabitable in the summer. That didn't matter, because what went on in Washington wasn't very important to the average citizen. The political decisions that really counted were made in state capitals and city halls. Federal taxes were quite low, as were federal expenditures.

The War changed all that. The United States emerged victorious from World War II, but we found ourselves saddled with what seemed to be enormous debts, and we faced a devastated world. Money was needed. The Marshal Plan saved Europe, but it cost us. We had built a tax-gathering machine to finance the War; the needs of others kept that machine in place after the war ended. The result was a great increase in federal power, coupled with new international responsibilities. In the Far East, MacArthur rebuilt Japan from an aggressive empire to an unarmed liberal democracy. In Europe, General Lucius Clay in cooperation with democratic elements built West Germany into an armed liberal democracy. NATO became a permanent "entangling alliance."

We were not done rebuilding our former enemies when we found we were in a new war. The Cold War wasn't as bloody as World War II, but after Korea it was clear that it was bloody enough. It was also quite expensive. Instead of dismantling the enormous war machine we had created to beat the Germans and Japanese, we had to augment it. This required management, and Washington, swollen from the wartime expansion of its functions and equipped with new tax-gathering machinery, swelled again and again.

The Cold War brought about genuine divisions among the American people. While most (including Mr. Heinlein) saw armed militant Soviet Communism as a direct threat not only to world peace and stability but to the United States, many intellectuals thought the only threat was anti-Communist hysteria. Meanwhile, we had what appeared to be politics as usual, but with this difference: politics became more important than business; more important than the churches; more important than anything else we did. The growing tendency of political decisions to affect our lives inevitably attracted more professional politicians: the long era of amateur government was coming to an end.

That end came in the Johnson era. The Great Society programs were intended to make fundamental changes in the power structure of the nation; and they did. The changes wrought were probably not those intended. Then came the Watergate scandals, and a perceived need for reform.

The reforms deliberately crippled the party structure. Power was fragmented, doled out among the 435 representatives and 100 senators, divided among endless committees and sub-committees - but never returned to the people.

By 1975 the world described in this book had ceased to exist.

These notes have two purposes. First, they explain terms no longer in use, or used differently two generations ago. They also provide the opportunity to show where Heinlein was exactly right, or, more rarely, where he is known to have changed his views. Robert Heinlein began his political career as a moderate Democrat. His attempts at electoral office ended when he was defeated for the Democratic nomination to the California State Assembly by an up and coming Los Angeles Irish politician named Sam Yorty, who went on to win the Assembly seat, and later to become mayor of the City of Angels. Years later, Mr. Heinlein visited me when I was campaign manager for Yorty's successful bid for a third term as mayor. By that time, Heinlein had made many changes in his political philosophy, moving closer to the Libertarian position.

Thus the notes: the world changed a lot after this book was written, and so did the philosophical views of the author. I have attempted here to deal with both changes. Since this is a work on practical politics, I have tried to keep political philosophy to a minimum; but since the practical value of this book is as a manual of operations for a political system that doesn't exist, but which can be reclaimed, clearly we can't avoid the question. At the least we have to decide whether the system can be restored, and if so should it be.

On that question I feel comfortable: Robert Heinlein loved the America of this book, and would have loved to see it come back.

However: since we can't just turn back the clock, there will inevitably be questions about which changes to the system are acceptable and which are not. In some cases we know, from other works, particularly Expanded Universe, some of what Mr. Heinlein might have said. In others I can only guess, and rather than do that, I give my own opinion. So far as I know Mr. Heinlein and I were in agreement about most basic philosophical issues - hardly surprising given his influence on my life-but not on all. As an example, we disagreed profoundly about conscription. Ironically, when Heinlein wrote this book, he supported peace-time conscription (while recognizing that there were legitimate contrary views) and had absolutely no doubts about the necessity for the wartime draft; positions which I hold now, but which he rejected in his later years.

Therefore, you must think of these notes as my commentaries. I speak as an unabashed admirer of Robert A. Heinlein; as one whose formative years were profoundly influenced by his writings, and whose later years were enriched by our friendship and his generous support of my career; but I speak for myself. I wouldn't dare try to speak for Robert.

Jerry Pournette Hollywood, California July 1992

NOTES

1. (Seepage 6) Unfortunately, while some forgot the lessons of the past, others learned the wrong ones. In the rush to "reform" the political process after Watergate, changes were made that insured that the "senile congressman" would stay in office. So would all the others. By the 1980s the turnover rate in the House of Representatives was lower than that of the British House of Lords, or of the Politburo of the U.S.S.R. This was not the intended consequence of the "reforms" but it was a predictable effect.

It's important to note that the post-Watergate "reforms" took place largely because many good people became disgusted with the political process and turned away from it, leaving the reformation to be organized by zealots and incumbents. It probably should have surprised no one that given their heads, the incumbents made it nearly impossible to defeat them, but in fact most were surprised. The incumbents were shocked to discover that they could no longer be voted out of office.

Whether term limits are a good idea or not is legitimately debatable, but there's no question that term limits address what has become a very real problem.

2. (Seepage 8) Roosevelt had permitted Stalin to send Soviet forces into Iran as a safeguard against a Nazi presence there. When the war ended, Stalin didn't want to leave. President Truman insisted and went so far as to threaten war if the Soviets did not pull back behind their own borders. This prevented the Iranian oil fields from falling into Soviet hands, and had a profound effect on the future of the Middle East