This concentration of the ultimate governmental authority in the hands of small groups of narrow, ignorant, and unconscionable manipulators tends inevitably to degrade the actual office-holder, or, what is the same thing, to make office-holding prohibitive to all men not already degraded. It is almost impossible to imagine a man of genuine self-respect and dignity offering himself as a candidate for the lower house--or, since the direct primary and direct elections brought it down to the common level, for the upper house--in the average American constituency. His necessary dealings with the electors themselves, and with the idiots who try more or less honestly to lead them, would be revolting enough, but even worse would be his need of making terms with the professional politicians of his party--the bosses of the local machine. These bosses naturally make the most of the constitutional limitation; it works powerfully in their favour. A local notable, in open revolt against them, may occasionally beat them by appealing directly to the voters, but nine times out of ten, when there is any sign of such a catastrophe, they are prompt to perfume the ticket by bringing forth another local notable who is safe and sane, which is to say, subservient and reliable. The thing is done constantly; it is a matter of routine; it accounts for most of the country bankers, newspaper owners, railroad lawyers, proprietors of cement works, and other such village bigwigs in the lower house. Here everything runs to the advantage of the bosses. It is not often that the notable in rebellion is gaudy enough to blind the plain people to the high merits of his more docile opponent. They see him too closely and know him too well. He shows none of that exotic charm which accounts, on a different plane, for exogamy. There is no strangeness, no mysteriousness, above all, no novelty about him.