The Candidate

"Individuals gain power because they answer a need shared by an entire population.”

                                                 Eileen Heyes

For a representative democracy to function, intelligent and noble people of high moral character have to run for public office.  It takes both courage and moxie to place one’s entire life (as well as friends and family) under a microscope.  Unfortunately, candidates for elective offices are not protected by anything like the Queensberry Rules prohibiting blows below the belt.  The only protection they have from slanderous lies is the morality and good judgement of their fellow citizens.

Elections, of course, take place in the zeitgeist of the times.  For example, when many people are out of work or working in low-wage jobs, voters become angry.  During periods of high unemployment, “It is no wonder the people [have] little faith in the ability of their . . . government to get anything done.”  In times of high stress the electorate quite naturally looks for simple solutions and scapegoats.  One candidate, “. . . sensed, as many politicians did not, that people did not want a detailed plan for turning the economy around. What [they] wanted was someone to lift their spirits and restore their sense of national pride.”  In the words of Eileen Heyes, “Someone will have to come along who thinks very simply,” and demonstrates that he  “. . . has the strength to carry out his simple ideas.”

The modern political candidate must read the mood, fears, and thinking of the voters.  He must also be able to command the attention of the media, especially television.   Insults and extreme statements given by a talented entertainer and self-promoter are extremely effective.  In one case the candidate's rhetoric was so outrageous that, “Even [his] associates considered it something of an embarrassment, not at all a fitting complement to his powerful speeches.”  It did not matter; the cruder and the more outlandish his statements became, the higher he climbed in the poles and the more free television coverage he garnered. “If the new [candidate] was rather extreme in some of his views, well, that could be overlooked.”  In the words of Heyes, “All great movements are popular movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by a firebrand of the word.”  And this candidate was certainly a firebrand.

Slowly but surely he was able to destroy all his opponents, leaving the establishment scratching their collective head and asking, how could this happen? Yes inexplicably, “The temperamental [newcomer] was now a key player in the national arena.”  It seemed that “The sentries [party officials] guarding the way proved, in the end, incapable of stopping the cunning newcomer.”  “How could one man do all this in a civilized industrial nation in an era of mass communication?” This candidate was certainly a different kind of candidate.  “He refused to listen to any real information about his opponents, relying instead on his own instincts.”  “He refused to listen to his [political] advisers’ predictions that he was marching into disaster.”

“Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be ‘discovered’ by an election.  In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the broad average usually announces himself personally.”  On 1/1/1933 to the surprise and dismay of the entire world, Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany.  Yes, all the material quoted in this essay [with slight modifications noted by brackets and ellipsis] refer to Adolf Hitler and were taken from  Eileen Heyes’1994 book, Adolf Hitler.