THE EXHILARATION OF ELECTIONEERING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1685, 15 June 1904, Page 60

THE EXHILARATION OF ELECTIONEERING

Electioneering, declares "an old hand” at the game, writing to an English paper, is the champagne of political controversy. By contrast, those xvho are content to remain arm chair politicians sip but the small beer of politics. There is all the difference in the xvorld in this connection. between theoi'etic and applied politics. The attractive human integer is introduced, and gives flesh and blood properties to xvhat has hitherto been a mere abstraction. By the time you have covered a score of elections your knowledge of human nature lias become almost encyclopaedic,, equalling, if it does not surpass, the extensive and peculiar acquaintance which Sam Slick boasted xvith his fellow mortals and their common foiblesi, faults and frailties. Admittedly, hoxvever, this enlightenment may not be xvholly exhilarating. It is rather in the contact xvith those choice spirits, scattered up and clown the country, xvho—belonging to either political party—are the sources and inspiration of political life and movement; in the healthy friction set up by opposition to our aims and ends; in the attempt to excite all the nobler passions of a people; in the gratifying discovery that the effort has not been in vain, and that, beneath the apparent apathy, slumbers strong, healthy and truly patriotic sentiment which may be axvakened by tli9 timely appeal—it is these things xvhich are the open secrets of the exhilaration of electioneering. The atmosphere of the political demonstration is exhilarating to a degree—nay, intoxicating to those xvho have not had seared with expensive experience across their political record, the first fundamental principle of practical electioneering—Put not your faith in public meetings. Nevertheless, to watch a great mass meeting under the wand of a skilled magician is of the essence of the exhilaration of electioneering. The old Adam in xxs, too, has a distinct—possibly a predominantpart in our exhilaration. Don’t let us. even in the moment xvlien moral or patriotic exaltation is most characteristic of our polities, forget that as that genial soul Charles Lamb xvould have said “A clear fire, a clean hearth and the rigour of the game,” make their instant appeal to us. The Committee Room, the polling station, the counting room—xvliat scenes and centres of healthy excitement are these! The open and the eox r ert opponent —how they put us uoon our metal! Our prey —the indifferent, the neutral, the antagonistic, or the favourable voter, as xve are pleased to label him—xvith xvhat supnressed enthusiasm and adroit generalship xve stalk him! He excites in us all the tender and the tragic emotions as xve pass from the expectation of a stalwart supporter of "our man” to the despairing discovery that he is a hitter and resolute opponent. Then, the heckler, the "eleventh hour.” and the disturbing elector; what familiar types are these of men by xvhom our withers are, alas, too often wrung! Exhilaration —thy name is electioneering. ’Tis "cricket” indeed to all xvho play the game. From the dullard’s point of viexr the excitement under which the electioneerer la-' hours is a mild form of lunacv. But there is method in his madness. Whether he approaches like an army with, banners. takes the political flood xvith his programme, is the local man or the Parliamentary leader, the candidate with a purse or . a patrimony, or a real penchant for politics, his conduct is regulated by a hundred years of electioneering, and an intimate knowledge of the manifold xvays in which the human imagination is caught and held, and the electoral instinct of the Englishman excited and influenced. Comic as many electioneering capers are, and unthinkable in the hours of sober reflection they are little more than (he outxvard and visible manifestations of boisterous good spirits and disinterested enthusiasm, .than xvhich there are no more effective specifics for the ill-humours that political flesh is heir to. And it may be fairly questioned xvhothcr for the hypochondriac a month’s vigorous electioneering is not a better prescription than a month at the seaside.