Political Man vs. Managerial Machine
Human Civilization is the Struggle Between Great Men & Hordes of Mediocre Statesmen
In the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on September 10, a stark contrast was presented to the American people. Trump was his usual self: his jaw set like that of stone-cold killer, he jabbed, mocked, and exposed his rival’s incompetence with the kind of directness and ferocity we are accustomed to. Kamala, on the other hand, vainly strove to be the “adult” in the room: recounting her supposedly rags-to-riches self-made success story, pretending to be shocked and insulted by Trump’s accusations, scolding him and constantly shaking her head and waving her hands, and in other ways perfectly representing the smarmy girl-boss stereotype.
Voters often ponder how we wound up with these two as our candidate options. Is this not a damning indictment of the dilapidated state of American politics? Perhaps, but there is another way to look at this. Put policy to the side for a moment. The election of 2024 presents us not merely with two different candidates, but two different visions and springs of political action. Trump is a throwback to a politics that revolves around greatness of soul and powerful, ambitious personalities. Kamala is the zenith of the weary and endless grinding of the Democratic political machine. Trump presents us with dynamism, keen foresight and political sense, spontaneity, rough but honest rhetoric, and courage in the face of death. Kamala presents us with the slick political actor, stuffed with well-worn platitudes and thin talking-points, her face plastered with a fake smile while her non-scripted answers reveal a painfully shallow and insulting personality.
Man vs. The Machine
In the ancient world of classical Greece and Rome, politics was an arena where great men would engage in contests to see who could shine most brightly in their rhetoric, statesmanship, and acts of bravery and magnanimity toward his city and fellow citizens. There were no parties, no whip, no partisan solidarity, no peaceful transfers of power. The transactional, procedural, and constitutional politics familiar to us were foreign to the ancient world. The city, its various parts and different social classes, were the joints and sinews that constituted its political soul. There was no separation of society and the state; nor was the economy embedded in the society. In fact, there was no such thing as “the state” in classical Greece that existed independently and ruled over the citizens. The city was the men who composed it, those who made up the political community (koinonia) for the sake of political solidarity (homónoia). The city was thus administered by all the men directly and in person, what is properly known as a “democracy.”
In this context, and especially in the assembly, opportunities abounded for great men to prove their worth—first in speech as they sought to persuade their compatriots that their opinion of the just, beautiful, and advantageous was the true opinion and most suitable for their situation and need, and then in acts of political leadership and military valor. As one scholar describes the scene,
To be great and to be brilliant, to shine, to be lamprós [bright or radiant like the stars]: this was the desire that animated the Greek pólis. Long before … Homer [had] depicted a luminous world in which men shared in the nature of the gods and sought to shed all mortality through action on the public stage. Again and again, in his two great epics, the circle of warriors gathers on the middle ground (es meson) to deal with questions of concern to one and all. There, in public assembly, Homer’s heroes deliberate in common. There, in full view of all, they parcel out the booty gained in war and make public reparation for injustice done. And there, in all solemnity, they set out the rich prizes which will be claimed by those victorious in the funeral games put on to honor their dead. It is not fortuitous that agōn—the Homeric word for “public assembly” and “assembly place”—meant “contest” as well. To occupy the middle ground was to enter an agonizing struggle for preeminence and renown.
If one emerged victorious in the deliberative contest, one could achieve great reputation and honor through benefactions for one’s city and fellow citizens. By this, men could achieve a kind of immortality—their names and deeds etched in the memory of their people and their genius worshiped as a hero apotheosized. The politics of the ancient world revolved around great and ambitious men, those with intelligence and virtue that distinguished them from the masses of the vulgar and servile.
In contrast, our modern political landscape can hardly boast of anyone even remotely impressive—let alone great-souled men. Instead, liberal democracies tend to shuffle mediocre, weak, and effeminate political officials to the front, those who have paid their dues within a party machine and administrative apparatus and now expect to be rewarded with “leadership” responsibilities. Machine politics emerged in the nineteenth century and reached its peak in the generation after the Civil War. Its iconic symbol is Tammany Hall of New York, founded and incorporated in the 1780s and long an efficient political organization of the Democratic Party. Nineteenth-century parties and machine politics are virtually synonymous with corruption and graft: the image of smoke-filled barrooms where party bosses secretly struck political bargains is all too common.
In many cases, the image mirrored reality. Under the leadership of William Marcy Tweed and the Tweed Ring, Tammany became notorious for political inefficiency, vote-buying and bribery, chaos, and financial corruption. But after Tweed and his associates were locked up in 1871, Tammany was reorganized by John Kelly. Under Kelly’s leadership, the society was turned into an efficient and ruthless political organization of disciplined understudies and loyal members. Instead of buying votes, Kelly deployed Tammany’s resources to provide needed services to the city: coal for fire, baskets of food, money for rent payments, funeral expenses, clothing and building materials, legal counsel and bail payments, and much more. In response, members would pay their dues, vote as they were told, and keep quiet when rumors of scandals reached their ears. Within the machine, each person had a role; no one was left out, but no one was preeminent either.
The Tammany model of political organization soon spread to other cities: immigrant-based machines in Chicago, St. Paul, Detroit, Jersey City, Boston, Hartford, and New Haven all sprung up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today we are used to speaking of the “blue machines” in Democratic urban strongholds—like Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York—but these operations are well over a hundred years old. They are efficient because they are politically reliable. They essentially replicate the ancient practice of patronage, in which high-ranking political city officials take on the role of patron, while rank-and-file voters fulfill the function of client. Goods and services—and often special privileges (sometimes illegally)—are exchanged for automatic votes. The result is that Democrats can rely upon these city machines to deliver electoral victories, and often by the margins necessary to overwhelm rural red districts in the same state. The cost is corruption and city mismanagement, as well as a dearth of genuine political talent. Instead of embodying beautiful speech and virtuous acts, machine officials reach the top in some of the most underhanded and repugnant ways imaginable; those willing to sacrifice morals and integrity for victory and power often achieve what they desire.
The Greek model of politics was not without corruption, intrigue, and scurrilous characters. But at least it afforded the opportunity for acts of greatness and honor, allowing men to speak and act freely and nobly. Machine politics squelches this; such men are a danger to the machine, and their greatness must be suppressed.
The Need for Great Men
In the twentieth-century, political machines were cannibalized by the Democratic and Progressive drive for efficient administration and political expertise. Patronage did not disappear, but was transformed through technical education, the isolation of administration from the roughness and vulgarity of party politics, and the ever-increasing reliance upon legal adjudication and case law to determine and streamline political procedure. As explored and explained by James Burnham, C. Wright Mills, and Sam Francis, a managerial model of politics was adopted that produced an isolated and global class of professional elites who believed they were entitled to run America and the world (especially after World War II). This, in effect, transformed American national politics into a single, regime machine by the 1970s. Within this regime machine there were two halves of a single party: a dominant, Democratic party, and its subordinate, lesser Republican half. The educational tool that produced apparatchiks suitable for the regime were the Ivy League colleges and universities that adopted a unifying liberal and postmodern ideology sold as education (cemented into its final form after the 1960 cultural revolutions).
The combination of political machines and administrative politics has produced a class of mediocre managerial climbers. These are people who have scrapped their way to the top through every means available. Neither their innate talents, nor deep character, nor genuine knowledge, nor beneficent rule for the good of their constituents has contributed to their rise. Instead, they miraculously fail upwards, being rewarded with greater responsibilities and larger salaries as they habitually mismanage basic tasks. The management class (in politics and business) is dominated by feminists and effeminate men. It draws such people because it plays to their learned dispositions: managers are known for being nagging, lazy, nitpicky, entitled, rule-followers, and willing to settle for less than the best. This is because there is no glory in managerialism, but merely a paycheck and perhaps a future promotion. Managerialism provides the dopamine hit from the power trip in commanding others, but rarely holds the powerful to account for high standards or rigorous outcomes. The outcome and consequences are predictable: citizens are neglected as managers rake in hundreds of thousands, and philanthropy for “humanity” replaces human charity and benevolence for one’s neighbors.
When one looks at dynamic and successful businesses like Ford, Apple, and Tesla, there is usually a dominating and daring male figure at the helm: Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. (Of course, “success” in business, i.e., profit, is no guarantee of human greatness, e.g., Bill Gates.) Yet there seems to be no political counterparts. We search in vain for the great political men among us who will rise above the rest, distinguishing themselves through acts of justice and magnanimity. This accounts for the difference between Trump and Kamala as they appeared on our screens during the debate. One slept and bribed her way to the top of her party’s managerial machine, and is now being rewarded (although accidentally) with a nomination she is clearly unqualified for; the other rejected the machine of his party and voluntarily allied himself with the forgotten man, fighting through rigged elections, slanderous media hit jobs, unjust lawfare, false accusations of foreign interference, surprise FBI raids, and now bravely staring down two assassination attempts just for the opportunity to once again govern a country and people he loves.
The powerful urge we feel to be led by great men, to admire and reverence and learn from them, is why Americans are drawn toward figures like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur. It is why historical and moral mythologies so quickly develop around such persons and are fiercely defended when attacked (for example, consider that backlash to Darryl Cooper’s recent interview with Tucker Carlson where Cooper accused Churchill of villainy and crimes during WWII). It is why so many find Kamala repulsive despite her polished look and are drawn toward Trump precisely because he is so inexplicable in our managerial matrix.
The Problem of Female Leadership
The need for greatness screams at us from the managerial swamp of incompetence and mediocrity; and the need for great men is demanded by our feminine and egalitarian age. After three or four waves of “feminism,” traditional American culture—which was originally thoroughly masculine and patriarchal—has been harassed, beaten, and lampooned to death. Not only does everyone now assume that men and women are interchangeable in their social roles and abilities (“women can do everything men can do, and better!”), but we have reached the absurd consequences of feminism taken to its logical conclusions: women can become men, and men can become women. Gender is a fiction and a social construct of the patriarchy designed to oppress women, we are told. Women are strong and independent, and have overcome centuries of misogyny and abuse by … effectively erasing their own gender and allowing men to dominate women’s sports and invade women’s restrooms.
The feminine conquest of America has rendered the country weak, immature, and vulnerable to conquest. Since men are designed by God to protect and provide for their families and people, men who are turned into women (psychologically and emotionally) endanger their families and nations. This is the cause of much of what ails American today: from foreign wars waged by Under Secretaries in pursuit of ancestral revenge (e.g., Victoria Nuland in Ukraine), to “love and acceptance” for sexual immorality (e.g., LGBTQ ideology and “same-sex marriage”), to indiscriminately “welcoming the stranger” as a justification for de facto open borders, both women in prominent positions of leadership and emasculated men have joined hands to implement a complete reversal of American values, society, and ways of life.
Female leadership, however, is disastrous—in the family, in the Church, and in business and politics. This is not a misogynist view, for it does not hold women in hate or disgust, but instead understands them differently than feminists. It takes seriously the natural differences between men and women. Just how believing that men can become pregnant and have children is a dangerous lunacy, so believing that women can become men and be political statesmen and infantry soldiers is devastating to men, women, and children.
In the first book of his Politics, Aristotle analyzes the ancient Greek household and home economy. There, speaking of the rule of the father over his children and the husband over his wife, Aristotle declares that “it is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children—over both as freemen but not with the same mode of government, but over the wife to exercise republican government and over the children monarchical; for the male is by nature better fitted to command than female … and the older and fully developed person than the younger and immature.” After admitting that “republican government” often meant that the roles of ruler and ruled would periodically rotate (i.e., ruling and being ruled in turn), Aristotle concluded that this was not so for the conjugal relationship: “the male stands in this relationship [of ruler] to the female continuously” (1259a40-1259b10).
Why is this the case? It is not, the Philosopher tells us, because men and women (or parents and children) vary in their capacity for virtue: “it is evident therefore that both [the ruler and ruled] must possess virtue [such as temperance or justice], but that there are differences in their virtue” (1260a1-5). Instead, the distinction between ruler and ruled relates to the order of the soul:
The soul by nature contains a part that rules and a part that is ruled, to which we assign different virtues, that is, the virtue of the rational and that of the irrational. It is clear then that the case is the same also with other instances of ruler and ruled. Hence there are by nature various classes of rulers and ruled. For the free rules the slave, the male the female, and the man the child in a different way. And all possess the various parts of the soul, but possess them in different ways; for the slave does not have the deliberate part at all, and the female has it, but without full authority, while the child has it, but in an undeveloped form. Hence the ruler must possess intellectual virtue in completeness … while each of the other parties must have that share of this virtue which is appropriate to them.
Aristotle’s remark that women (by nature) lack “full authority” (ἄκυρον/akyron, or “are not sovereign”) is a description of something that was once obvious to all. Physically, on average, women are smaller and less intimidating than men, their bones and muscle mass being more diminutive, and they require protection (as do children). As the Apostle Paul says, women are the “weaker vessel” (1 Pet. 3:7). Intellectually and virtuously, women and men may be similar, but physiological differences persist: men are more analytic, objective, and spatial-visually enhanced in their thinking as their brain hemispheres are connected with fewer neural pathways; the hemispheres of women’s brains, on the other hand, are more interconnected, attributing to women greater capabilities of empathy and verbal understanding. Men are drawn toward things and problem-solving, while women are drawn toward faces and relationships. This means that (on average) men are better suited for tasks of political and military leadership that require weighing risks, foresight and future projection, navigating conflict by relying upon an internal confidence that is not dependent upon the approval of others, and sheer courage in the face of attack or bodily danger—not to mention the physical strength needed to manage crushing workloads on little sleep. Women are not lesser than men, but different; the two sexes complement each other and, when joined in marriage, constitute a united whole.
While this does not mean that there may not be some outstanding exceptions where female political leaders shine (e.g., Margaret Thatcher), the political arena is not fit for most women. Kamala Harris is no Margaret Thatcher. Be assured that if she wins, managerial politics will not only continue but increase in its intensity as her effeminate male handlers double-down the systematic deconstruction of America.
Conclusion
Soft and pusillanimous managerialism surrounds us. We are weighed down by inexplicable and byzantine bureaucracies at our universities and colleges; we are treated like cattle at the DMV; our hospitals and doctors are incompetent to diagnose basic illnesses or treat us without pharmaceuticals; business and non-profit boards are stuffed with feminist administrators and effeminate busybodies; our political representatives now only represent themselves and their donor classes.
The choice between Trump or Harris this November is more than a choice between the Republican and Democratic candidates. It is not that at all. It is, instead, a choice between continuing the model of managerial politics and our regime machine, or a return to a politics of great and dynamic men. It is a choice between decline or the chance at American revitalization. It is a choice between the Political Man or the Managerial Machine.
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