without giving up their
drive toward mediocrity, and they meant to have it. In a way, they got
it.

They got the vote extended to everyone. The man on subsidy or public
dole could vote to demand more. The man who read of nothing beyond sex
crimes could vote on the great political issues of the world. No ability
was needed for his vote. In fact, he was assured that voting alone was
enough to make him a fine and noble citizen. He loved that, if he
bothered to vote at all that year. He became a great man by listing his
unthought, hungry desire for someone to take care of him without
responsibility. So he went out and voted for the man who promised him
most, or who looked most like what his limited dreams felt to be a
father image or son image or hero image. He never bothered later to see
how the men he'd elected had handled the jobs he had given them.

Someone had to look, of course, and someone did. Organized special
interests stepped in where the mob had failed. Lobbies grew up. There
had always been pressure groups, but now they developed into a third arm
of the government.

The old Farm Lobby was unbeatable. The big farmers shaped the laws they
wanted. They convinced the little farmers it was for the good of all,
and they made the story stick well enough to swing the farm vote. They
made the laws when it came to food and crops.

The last of the great lobbies was Space, probably. It was an accident
that grew up so fast it never even knew it wasn't a real part of the
government. It developed during a period of chaos when another country
called Russia got the first hunk of metal above the atmosphere and when
the representatives who had been picked for everything but their grasp
of science and government went into panic over a myth of national
prestige.

The space effort was turned over to the aircraft industry, which had
never been able to manage itself successfully except under the stimulus
of war or a threat of war. The failing airplane industry became the
space combine overnight, and nobody kept track of how big it was, except
a few sharp operators.

They worked out a system of subcontracts that spread the profits so wide
that hardly a company of any size in the country wasn't getting a share.
Thus a lot of patriotic, noble voters got their pay from companies in
the lobby block and could be panicked by the lobby at the first mention
of recession.

So Space Lobby took over completely in its own field. It devel