Reprise: Process
In the early years of the Hall, one of the greatest shortcomings in the electoral process was the briefing of electors. Carried on by mail, it was variable — and brief. The electors were supposed to know whom they were voting for and why. Seldom, however, did they have the opportunity to discuss the nominees among themselves. Director Johnson once said that briefings in conference, and decisions in camera rather than in public, would prove beneficial. “If funds were available, electors would be assembled quinquennially for viva voce conferences,” with devil’s advocated to oppose candidates, as Mark Twain had thought necessary.
Such collegiality might have saved a space for Noah Webster and for others in the race who only “placed” or “showed.” One was George Rogers Clark, superb general of the Revolutionary War, who won the Old Northwest in an extraordinarily heroic campaign, and whose brother was Clark of Lewis& Clark. It required sixteen quinquennials to Webster’s seventeen before General Clark was finally declared out of the running.
When he learned of the high powered campaign put on for John Philip Sousa, Robert Moses wrote that his election would be, “a funeral march” for the Hall of Fame.
However corny it may look to the sophisticates you can’t laugh off this support. He will surely be elected because the Hall Fame has no active electors and no competitive standards or scale of fame. Without a meeting of electors, electioneering procedure will militate against anything but a traditional American popularity contest in which the good guy wins.
We can, however, only speculate that a fund for meetings of the electors might have improved the process. In pre-World War II days — days of train travel and uppers and lowers — it would have been costly and difficult to assemble a broadly representative body. As late as 1940 Assistant Director Bertha Lyons strongly suggested electors’ meetings “to awaken interest in their duties and make valuable friends.” She hastened to add that only those in or near New York City would accept. After the war, travel became easier but the cost exceeded the budget. The briefings continued without formal exchange of ideas.
There is no doubt, however, that the most thorough, if tilted, briefings for Hall of Fame elections were performed by those ardent supporters who seemed to have ready money for their candidates. Say what we will, there is nothing reprehensible, nothing illegal about lobbying when all hands are on top of the table, when the information is accurate, and there is no hidden quid pro quo lading to the greatest good for the least number of the most well-to-do. Although they can be hoodwinked, voters are not required to listen. Some of our best laws have grown out of the work of citizen groups.
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The results of seventy-six years give their own witness. Doubters doubt. Former NYU Chancellor Sidney Borowitz is one He writes that he felt “the project was doomed . . . I cannot feel that the concept was faulty.” In colonial days Benjamin Franklin had written in Poor Richard’s Almanac, “There have been as many great souls unknown as any of the most famous.” Borowitz says, “There were too many great Americans and too few spots to put them in, so politicization of the choices was inevitable.” He did not volunteer his own list.