Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1895 — Politics as a Game. [ARTICLE]

Politics as a Game.

Doctor Parkhurst, of. New York, in a talk with a reporter not long ago, described a common type of politician as a man “who may be honest, who m'ay be incorruptible, who may be reputable, but who handles great Interests without any appreciation of those interests. Men are -tq him mere plank figures, blank checker-men, and he

moves them on his board without reference to the public.” It is precisely this kind of politician who in the long run does as much harm as the man who is personally corrupt. The "boss” of the first type will not enrich himself directly from the public treasury, but he will connive at every kind of trickery and dishonesty by others to attain his end. That end is personal success, the admiration and envy of those struggling unavailing! y for the same objects, the general exclamation at his wonderful shrewdness and superior skill in managing men. Such a-politician cares nothing for great questions in themselves, nor even for his party in itself—although party fealty is his constant cry; he uses these things merely as cards in the game he is playing. The zest of the game, the exhilaration of winning, are to him in politics what other men find In the racing of horses or yachts. The cure lies in the refusal of voters to be longer used as pawns on the bosses’ political chess-board. That kind of politics is what Emerson had in mind when he said, “Some day we shall supersede politics with education.”