Take Back your Government by Robert A. Heinlein

Author:Robert A. Heinlein [Heinlein, Robert A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612420615
Google: eERKvgAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

How to Win an Election (continued)

The Grass-Roots Campaign:

From here on a bewildering variety of possible activities will press their claims on you. All of them will appear to be of use to the campaign; each will be eagerly supported by some member of your group as being ‘Just the thing we need to do!” Unless you have some touchstone rule to go by you will waste your efforts and drive yourself nuts with meaningless activity.

Consider each move, no matter how small, in these terms:

(a) Will the action help to get a specific, individual vote (or votes) in your district and registered in your party?

(b) If the effect is general rather than specific, is the shotgun spread aimed at your own district? Can it be carried out at no cost? If the activity involves time or physical effort for you or the candidate, are the probable results in votes large enough to warrant it, or would it be better to use die time in sleep, going to the movies, playing cribbage, or trying to keep up with the endless study of political news and political issues?

If you start right out thinking in diese terms you will soon apply the rules subconsciously and automatically. Let’s consider some examples:

Effective Methods: Anything which brings your candidate, you, or your volunteer, into direct contact with a doorbell of a private home is the best possible campaigning. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with this activity-neither storm, nor sleet, nor dark of night, nor the bland insistence of Very Important Persons. I don’t care how important he is; in this country he’s only got one vote!

The best doorbell-pushing is done by the candidate himself. Consider a vacuum-cleaner salesman; he shows up at your door with vacuum cleaner, ready to give you a demonstration. Compare him with a mythical salesman who attempts to sell vacuum cleaners with nothing but a sales talk and some pretty pictures — no vacuum cleaner! Which salesman will sell the larger number of vacuum cleaners?

Your candidate is the product you are trying to sell; the easiest way to do this is to let the prospective buyer see the product.

In doing so you gain an enormous advantage over the usual opposition, since the Grass-Roots Campaign has gone out of style in most parts of this country. Most of our citizens actually lay eyes on their officeholders and the hopefuls thereto about as often as they see circus elephants and with the same lack of intimate contact A man behind the footlights on a platform is a little bit unreal; he might as well be a movie.

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But the people, the individual Americans, are still interested in their candidates; to have one show up at the front door is as delightful a novelty to most of them as would be a chance to ride a circus elephant.

That unreality, the candidate on the platform, on the billboard, or in the newspaper, suddenly becomes warmly human and a little more than life size.

In addition to

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