The Duchess of Omnium’s discourse upon the tasks Omnium is unwilling to perform is much more an indictment of politics in its worst sense than this comparatively restrained analysis of Trollope’s. In much the same vein Meredith’s Stukely Culbrett declares that Nevil Beauchamp has “too strong a dose of fool’s honesty to succeed....” Hamer Shawcross’s own distillate of thirty years of political experience is a bitter brew. Dissimulation is the chief element in the formula for success. The politician must be an adept psychologist appealing not to reason and intellect but to “panic, passion, and prejudice.” Shawcross cynically adds that if these factors are not present at the critical moment, the politician must know how to create them. The lesson one learns from Chester Nimmo’s career is that the successful office holder must be as agile as a gymnast, as flexible as a contortionist, and as vigilant as a radar screen. In certain instances, the politician owes success to what he does not do rather than to what he does. The ultimate in the ossification of faculties whose exercise may be dangerous is reached by the Communists. General Golz reveals his formula for survival to Robert Jordan: “I never think at all. Why should I? I am General Sovietique. I never think. Do not try to trap me into thinking.” Peter Stirling’s list of requirements for political success is quite different. Although he mentions physical superiority and dishonesty, his lecture sounds like a naïve version of the Boy Scout oath. He mentions bosses, but his account of the way he influences his constituents suggests Socratic dialogues in Athenian meadows rather than politics in a tenement district of downtown Manhattan. The physical characteristics which he mentions briefly are noted by other authors, however. Nick Burr is a Virginia Lincoln in appearance, while Senator Ratcliffe in _Democracy_, and Senator Planefield in _Through One Administration_, represent the portly and impressive type. Dan Lurcock’s acquisition of Willis Markham is based upon precisely these qualities: “Let him get that magnificent head into the legislature, where it would be on view, and there was nothing he might not do with it.” This case appears to exaggerate the value of physical impressiveness, but it illustrates the very real advantage which it confers upon its possessor.