When Leaders Were Bosses: An Inside Look at Political Machines and Politics - Hardcover

"Bring back the bosses!" This has been the cry of many a person who has come to resent the increasing remoteness of big government and who remembers the help that the old-time political bosses gave to the needy in the past. As for the corruption of the bosses, those who favor their return can respond with one word - Watergate, which outdid the bosses at their worst in its cynical abuse of power.In this lively, informative inside look at American politics, Noal Solomon takes a fresh view of the bosses, "warts and all." Many of his insights come from his personal acquaintance with the last of the old-line political leaders, Boss Dan O'Connell, Democratic leader of Albany, New York, for more than fifty years. Mr. O'Connell's views on national, state, and local politics provide a lively counterpoint to Noal Solomon's wide-ranging observations. We see how such leaders as O'Connell, the rulers of Tammany Hall, Mayor Daley of Chicago, Curley and the Kennedys of Boston, and Huey Long of Louisiana, rose from humble beginnings to wield virtually dictatorial power over their regions. We learn too how their power was not based entirely on strong-arm methods. Indeed, they often won the gratitude - and the votes - of their constituents by providing services that no one else, in those pre-welfare days, could offer: help for the vast influx of immigrants that entered the country after the Civil War, food and coal for the poor, and jobs for the ambitions. On such foundations were the barometers of the political bosses built. The seamy side of the political organizations is not neglected. From the monumental (for the time) corruption of Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall, to the vote-buying and graft of recent days, Mr. Solomon reports the misdeeds of those who power corrupted. But, as he shows, the decline of the bosses has not led to a purification of modern politics. His concluding chapters paint a disturbing picture.