As they do today, citizens responded to crooks like Conkling by blaming everyone in Washington. No matter how satisfying, such public fury made things worse, teaching politicians to become less transparent, less democratic and more beholden to wealthy interests who could protect them from angry voters. Even the upstanding elder statesman William H. Seward found “public damnation” so heated that it was safer “to conceal what we do believe.”
If you know nothing about presidents like Benjamin Harrison or William McKinley, this is why. After the tumultuous 1870s, parties learned to stop nominating speechifying demagogues, so easy to caricature, and put dull, harmless men at the top of their tickets.
Even behind-the-scenes bosses changed. Gone were the orators and drinkers, replaced — as one historian put it — by “trim, quiet-spoken, indefatigable executives,” who spent election night sipping lemonade and went to bed early. One Boston boss captured the new sentiment with the mantra, “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”
Behind these aloof men stood huge monopolies.
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