Iida Post #2

Although Willie Talos is not Machiavellian by current day standards, he does adhere to the principles that Machiavelli wrote about in his book, The Prince. In The Prince, Machiavelli stresses the importance that princes do what they can to benefit the people before benefitting their wealthy peers. He says that it is better to have a reputation as a miser than to tax the people unnecessarily so as to be able to give expensive presents. Willie does the same thing by passing laws to benefit the ordinary people while taking money out of the pockets of the rich and powerful. “’You let that gang of MacMurfee’s boys in the Legislature get the notion they can pull something like this and there’s no telling where they’d stop. Do you think they like anything that’s been done? The extraction tax? Raising the royalty rate on State land? The income tax? The Highway program? The Public Health Bill?’” (p194). However, by doing things to benefit the ordinary people, Willie has made himself a lot of enemies in the upper classes, and he is not afraid to use illegal methods, as Machiavelli advocated, to make sure that he remains in power. “’What they care about is undoing what this administration has done. And now is the time to stomp ‘em.’” (P195). Willie will bribe and blackmail and cheat and lie and intimidate and do thousands of other things in order to remain in power so that he can keep helping the people. Although his methods are unscrupulous and illegal, what he is doing is what is best for his people which, as Machiavelli said, is the most important thing. Willie is a Machiavellian kind of leader, one that puts the results of his endeavors above the legality of the actions it took to achieve those results.