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Now Lewis presents to us Zenith politics, which are a miniature version of that era\'s national politics. Nationally, Warren Harding is running for (and will win) the U.S. presidency. Today, Harding is widely considered one of the weakest presidents ever to have held office--an opinion Lewis shared at the time. Yet, for much of his presidency, the handsome Harding was very popular. If the entire country can be so easily fooled, will Zenith be any wiser? Not according to Lewis.
Zenith\'s choice for mayor is between Seneca Doane, the \"radical\" we\'ve seen earlier, and Lucas Prout, a conservative mattress-maker. Babbitt naturally supports Prout, and thanks to his new reputation as a public speaker is invited to deliver political addresses for him. (The nature of Babbitt\'s success is revealed in Lewis\'s ironic comment: \"He acquired lasting fame for weeks.\") Babbitt\'s speeches are as long-winded, foolish, and illogical as you\'d expect, and Lewis takes pleasure in reporting them at some length.
Prout defeats Doane, and Babbitt is rewarded for his campaign work with \"advance information about the extension of paved highways.\" We\'ll see later that Babbitt will use this illegally obtained information to make shady business deals.
Babbitt\'s speech-making now wins him an even greater honor: he\'s invited to give the annual address to the Zenith Real Estate Board.
NOTE: BABBITT\'S SPEECH Babbitt\'s speech to the real estate board is considered by many critics to be one of the high points of Babbitt, for it gives Lewis a chance to show off fully his powers of parody. But other critics have said that it demonstrates one of Lewis\'s chief literary faults--that here and elsewhere in the book Lewis depends too much on his powers of imitation and parody and lets Babbitt drone on too long. As you read, try to pretend you\'re in the audience listening, and decide which view you take.
Babbitt begins his speech with an unfunny joke, then lists the ways in which Zenith is the best city in the United States. It\'s best, he claims, because it contains the highest proportion of Ideal Citizens, ambitious men full of Zip and Bang. These citizens are producing \"a new kind of civilization\" in which everything--stores, offices, streets, hotels, and newspapers--will be just as they are in Zenith.
As Babbitt quotes a verse by his friend Chum Frink, Lewis has a chance to parody another kind of bad writing, the dreadful poetry that passes for good literature in Zenith. Frink\'s message is the same as Babbitt\'s. Wherever you go in America, you\'ll meet the same kind of people: standardized American citizens, Nice Guys.
And what about those people who aren\'t standardized? To Babbitt, they\'re menaces. People who call themselves \"liberal\" and \"radical\" and \"nonpartisan\" are threats. Journalists and professors who criticize business should be stopped.
NOTE: BABBITT\'S PORTRAIT OF ZENITH Babbitt\'s speech shows him at his very worst--loud, smug, intolerant. He brags about schools but knows only ventilation systems, not teaching; he brags about art museums but knows only their buildings, not the art they contain. His idea of a park is a driveway \"adorned with grass, shrubs and statuary.\"
More important, Babbitt\'s speech will remind you of comments made earlier by Seneca Doane. Doane criticized Zenith for the pressures it puts on its citizens to conform. Babbitt applauds those pressures. He wants everyone to be an Ideal Citizen. Those people who aren\'t--foreigners, liberals, professors--are threats.
This, Lewis reminds us, is the most dangerous aspect of Zenith (and American) life. Standardization of hotels is one thing; standardization of thought is much worse. Babbitt and his friends claim to be loyal Americans, but they oppose a basic ideal of American democracy--tolerance for beliefs that differ from your own.
Lewis wants you to laugh at Babbitt\'s long-winded speech but he also wants you to see it as an example of what is wrong with Zenith and the segment of America Zenith represents. Do you think he is being fair in his portrait of Zenith\'s narrow mindedness or is he exaggerating to make his point? Do you think that the middle-class business people of today are more tolerant than Babbitt and his friends or have they simply learned to camouflage their intolerance better?
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