The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert

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PLOWBOY: I appreciate the fact that you don't set up one-sided simplistic solutions, but do you have any positive approaches to handling our problems? There weren't—to my knowledge— any truly promising systems, governments, or leaders described in any of your books that I've read.

HERBERT: There is definitely an implicit warning, in a lot of my work, against big government . . . and especially against charismatic leaders. After all, such people-well-intentioned or not-are human beings who will make human mistakes. And what happens when someone is able to make mistakes for 200 million people? The errors get pretty damned BIG!

For that reason, I think that John Kennedy was one of the most dangerous presidents this country ever had. People didn't question him. And whenever citizens are willing to give unreined power to a charismatic leader, such as Kennedy, they tend to end up creating a kind of demigod . . . or a leader who covers up mistakes—instead of admitting them—and makes matters worse instead of better. Now Richard Nixon, on the other hand, did us all a favor.

PLOWBOY: You feel that Kennedy was dangerous and Nixon was good for the country?

HERBERT: Yes, Nixon taught us one hell of a lesson, and I thank him for it. He made us distrust government leaders. We didn't mistrust Kennedy the way we did Nixon, although we probably had just as good reason to do so. But Nixon's downfall was due to the fact that he wasn't charismatic. He had to be sold just like Wheaties, and people were disappointed when they opened the box.

I think it's vital that men and women learn to mistrust all forms of powerful, centralized authority. Big government tends to create an enormous delay between the signals that come from the people and the response of the leaders. Put it this way: Suppose there were a delay time of five minutes between the moment you turned the steering wheel on your car and the time the front tires reacted. What would happen in such a case?

PLOWBOY: I guess I'd have to drive pretty slowly.

HERBERT: V-e-rrrrrrr-y slowly. Governments have the same slowresponse effect . . . and the bigger the government, the more slowly it reacts. So to me, the best government is one that's very responsive to the needs of its people . . . that is, the least, loosest, and most local government.

PLOWBOY: For the past few decades, though, power seems to have been getting more and more concentrated by big business and centralized authority. We've clearly been moving in the opposite direction from what you'd prefer.

HERBERT: I don't think that has to continue. I feel that as communication systems improve—and with the new computers that are continually being developed, communications are coming on like gangbusters—people won't be so dependent on the often one-sided reporting of the conventional media for their information. Folks will see that we can take control of some social functions now handled by big government schools, taxation, whatever-and that the "bigger and stronger is always more effective" idea is a phony bill of goods.

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