How to Become a Statesman

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Barack Obama likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, but he’s got more in common with George Washington.  George Washington Plunkitt that is.  Old G.W. was a Tammany Hall  politician who theories of machine politics and “honest graft” were chronicled in 1905 by William L. Riordan:

THIS volume discloses the mental operations of perhaps the most thoroughly practical politician of the day – George Washington Plunkitt, Tammany leader of the Fifteenth Assembly District, Sachem of the Tammany Society and Chairman of the Elections Committee of Tammany Hall, who has held the offices of State Senator, Assemblyman, Police Magistrate, County Supervisor and Alderman, and who boasts of his record in filling four public offices in one year and drawing salaries from three of them at the same time.

  This is Chapter Two of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: