Essay: ARE THE WASPS COMING BACK? HAVE THEY EVER BEEN AWAY?

(3 of 5)

The Federal Government has always been the domain of the Wasp. Until John Kennedy, every U.S. President was a Wasp, and so was every Vice President except Charles Curtis (1929-33), who was the son of an Indian. Last fall's candidates, Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, were quite predictably Wasps. Although the civil service has been a traditional path of advancement for non-Wasps (half of Post Office workers in the large cities are Negroes), the prestigious departments, such as State, are still run by Wasps. Congress is a Wasp stronghold: the newly elected one consists of 109 Catholics, 19 Jews, 10 Negroes, 3 Greek Orthodox, 4 Orientals and almost 400 Wasps. Committee chairmanships are largely in the hands of Wasps. Enlisted men in the armed services are an ethnic mix, but the officers are heavily Wasp. Even in the cities they no longer control politically—Chicago or Cleveland—Wasps have much behind-the-scenes power. In several cities, Wasp business leaders have mobilized to aid the blacks, including the militants in the ghettos. Other ethnic politicians fear the erosion of their own power as the result of Wasp-Negro deals.

A Divided Majority

As for the Wasp's moral authority, it is clearly waning, but he still has an inimitable asset: the inner security inherited from his Protestant background and his expansive American experience. "If you are a Wasp, you have the confidence that the Establishment is yours and that you are on the top," says Novelist Herbert Gold. "There is the feeling that the love of a horsy woman comes to you as a birthright," Hollywood may be filled mainly with non-Wasps, but they still usually take Wasp names and act out Wasp fantasies in films. In Jewish novels, the central character is often driven to live a Wasp-like life. Herzog finds his ultimate solace in a little bit of land he owns in the Berkshires: "symbol of his Jewish struggle for a solid footing in white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America."

Wasp power is obscured by the divisions natural to a majority, which keep Wasps from coalescing into the kind of cohesive blocs that other groups have formed. The Republican Party is preeminently Wasp; yet it has been rent for generations by deep-seated disagreements. Norman Mailer characterized the alienated delegates lusting for liberal blood at the 1964 convention. In a typical Mailer caricature, he evoked a "Wasp Mafia where the grapes of wrath were stored. Not for nothing did the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants have a five-year subscription to Reader's Digest and National Geographic, high colonies and arthritis, silver-rimmed spectacles, punched-out bellies and that air of controlled schizophrenia which is the merit badge for having spent one's life on Main Street. Indeed, there was agreement that the war was between Main Street and Wall Street."

ncG1vNJzZmibn6PBprrTZ6uipZVjsLC5jq2gpp1fqMKjv8KroJudomSus8DInKOeZ2BhgHR8j3JjcWtobYNzeZJlZ2lmmKm6rQ%3D%3D