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A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work First published in 1992 Latest edition: 1992 Publisher: Baen Books Mass Market Paperback ISBN 0671721577
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Reviews Heinlein wrote Take Back Your Government (originally entitled, How to be a Politician) in the months following the end of World War II, at a time when he felt an urgent need to warn the U.S. populace about the arms race. Heinlein himself referred to that time as his 'world saving' phase. Given the tenor of Take Back Your Government, Heinlein might have felt concern over the way the Truman administration was handling any number of situations in the wake of the war (this was written as everyone was witnessing radical and sometimes painful postbellum changes: housing shortages, spiraling inflation, epidemic labor strikes, Taft-Hartley, the Marshall Plan and other outlays of foreign aid, the National Security Act, the creation of the United Nations and many other things). And perhaps Heinlein had a little more faith in the wisdom of ordinary citizens acting in their enlightened self interest during this period of gearing down from World War II and ratchetting up to a new Cold War footing. To this end, he penned what amounts to a manual for citizens who wished to get involved in politics at the precinct level. Although we all know Robert Heinlein best as one of the truly great authors of speculative fiction, it is in the pages of Take Back Your Government that he shares with us his considerable know-how in the field of politics. In the 1930's, before he became a professional writer, Heinlein got thoroughly involved in California politics (as a Democrat!), both turning out copy for Sinclair Lewis' gubernatorial bid and himself running for a seat in the state legislature. Lewis and Heinlein both lost, but in the process, Heinlein learned a lot about the art and science of politics, from building coalitions to canvassing neighborhoods to dispensing patronage to working with machine pols, and he shares it all in this manual. His style is friendly and politically impartial, forsaking his opinions to concentrate totally on the civic processes that constitute the science of politics, and on the human niceties which constitute the art. One might wonder why a book written in 1946 about a style of politics that mass media and PACs have largely killed should be trotted out for publication in 1992. What possible relevance could it have in 1990s America, where money and Madison Avenue put officials in office and a vast portion of the electorate is effectively disenfranchised? In the election year of 1992, a lot of people felt a need to enfranchise themselves again and manifested their will by giving Ross Perot the largest percentage of the popular vote of any third-party presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose in 1912. Though Take Back Your Government hardly advocates the top-down approach that the Perotistas took, it does assure the ordinary citizen that he can, with a bit of dedication, make his will be felt. Fellow SF author Jerry Pournelle wrote the introduction, as well as a number of footnotes to the text. I feel that his hastily written material is more knuckleheaded than helpful, but I agree with him on one major point about Take Back Your Government, and that is that its chief value is its obsolescence. How starkly it contrasts the long-gone days of precinct politics with the system that only pretends to serve the ordinary citizen today. Unlike the Perotistas, Heinlein is not screaming `Throw the bums out!' but rather, `Get out your vote!' and the professional politician of Heinlein's manual is not a "rascal," a corrupt puppet of big business, but rather an honorable, self-sacrificing citizen doing his best to get out his own vote--in the finest American tradition. Wouldn't it be nice to have that sort of politician back in the majority? Possibly in that same period (though the date of writing is not known), Heinlein wrote a fascinating non-SF story about local campaign politics entitled, "A Bathroom of her Own," and it can be found in the anthology Expanded Universe. ~Beth Ager
Excerpts Robert Heinlein, on the utility of coopting special interest *groups*: "Church groups are frequently a cause of corruption and confusion in politics. Don't expect any real help from them. "Women, as a group [remember, this is 1946], are less politically enlightened and less politically honest than men. Test them before you trust them. "Elderly people, as a group, are politically selfish and socially irresponsible. Avoid organized groups of the old folks. "Reliable volunteer political workers are found most frequently among young people. However, the very best political volunteers are found in the three groups mentioned above."
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