credit, trollope and the republican primaries

I spent many hours in airports over the past few weeks - Beijing, Harbin, Beijing, HK, Manila, Bohol and back again (minus Harbin) - reading Anthony Trollope's 'The Way We Live Now.' It is a strange novel in a variety of ways, not least because we sympathize with few if any of the characters involved. Though it is certainly sensible to be wary of an author's explication of their own work, in this instance it is worth knowing a little about Trollope's avowed motivations for his work:

a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now.

Viewed as a narrative discourse on dishonesty it makes much more sense as a book - the private drama is perhaps less compelling than the public because it is only in the latter that dishonesty (as embodied by the 'Great Financier', Augustus Melmotte) is truly able to create its own reality - if only briefly. The action all hinges, now that I think about it, around 'credit' of one form or another.

"The Board-Room"

The word is in Trollope (as today) applied both to aspects of personality ('the fellows would give him credit for the audacity with which he had carried off the heiress to America') and the ability to receive services, assets and other benefits in advance of paying for them. And as today, the two meanings of the word are intimately related.

the nature of credit, how strong it is, --as the air,--to buoy you up; how slight it is;--as a mere vapour,- when roughly touched

He, the impecunious one,--the one whose impecuniosity extended to the absolute want of credit,--sat silent, stroking his heavy moustache  

how delicate a thing is credit. They persuaded a lot of men to stay away from that infernal dinner, and consequently it was spread about town that I was ruined. The effect upon shares which I held was instantaneous and tremendous. 

Why did he spend such a lot of money? Because he thought he could conquer the world by it, and obtain universal credit. He very nearly succeeded too. Only he had forgotten to calculate the force of the envy of his competitors.

Reading this book I could not help but think about the ongoing shenanigans of the Republican primaries. Quite apart from the obvious connections with campaign finances, Mitt Romney seems the archetype of the Great Financier seeking to derive political credit for having 'made good.' G.K. Chesterton discusses this tendency to 'worship success in the abstract' in 'What I saw in America' far better than I am able:

There is a fine shade of distinction between succeeding and making good, precisely because there must always be a sort of ethical echo in the word good. America does vaguely feel a man making good as something analogous to a man being good or a man doing good. It is connected with his serious self-respect and his sense of being worthy of those he loves.

The real purpose of recent attacks on Romney for 'vulture capitalism' seem to have been precisely to disconnect his commercial success from the idea of 'making good' and hence to deny him the credit associated with such success. So long as he is able to maintain and exploit that image of a man 'made good', it would appear, his apparent total lack of conviction on that tricky topic of actual 'policy' will be just a sideshow.

"Mr Melmotte speculates"

Gingritch's challenge is precisely the opposite - he must rely on the ephemeral credit gained by populist oratory and point-scoring to distract attention from the fact that he has no claim to have 'made good.' The insider/outsider distinction in American politics, whatever else it is, is a distinction between those who have manfully earned their bread outside the beltway and those who have suckled from the governmental teat.

"Mr Melmotte in Parliament"

There are many ways of earning credit, and many more ways of losing it - Trollope's investigation of just a few of these is well worth a read if you find such ideas of interest.