IV
When President Wilson read his war message to the Congress it must have been in the minds of many thousands who thrilled to the news that night, that a trinity of great American presidents was about to be completed; that a niche awaited Mr. Wilson in the same alcove with Washington and Lincoln. Many who were impatient and restless under the long correspondence with the Imperial German Government were willing to acknowledge that the delay was justified; that at last the nation was solidly behind the administration; that amid the stirring call of trumpets partisanship would be forgotten; and that, when the world was made safe for law and decency, Mr. Wilson would find himself in the enjoyment of an unparalleled popularity. It did not seem possible that he could fail. That he did fail of these hopes and expectations is not a matter that any true lover of America can contemplate with jubilation. Those of us who ask the greatest and the best things of and for America can hardly be gratified by any failure that might be construed as a sign of weakness in democracy. But Mr. Wilson’s inability to hold the confidence of the people, to win his adversaries to his standard, to implant himself in the affections of the mass, cannot be attributed to anything in our political system but wholly to his own nature. It is one of the ironies of our political life that a man like Mr. McKinley, without distinguished courage, originality, or constructive genius, is able, through the possession of minor qualities that are social rather than political, to endear himself to the great body of his countrymen. It may be, after all our prayers for great men, that negative rather than positive qualities are the safest attributes of a President.
It may fairly be said that Mr. Wilson is intellectually the equal of most of his predecessors in the presidency, and the superior of a very considerable number of them. The very consciousness of the perfect functioning of his own mental machinery made him intolerant of stupidity, and impatient of the criticism of those with whom it has been necessary for him to do his work, who have, so to put it, only asked to be “shown.” If the disagreeable business of working in practical politics in all its primary branches serves no better purpose, it at least exercises a humanizing effect; it is one way of learning that men must be reasoned with and led, not driven. In escaping the usual political apprenticeship, Mr. Wilson missed wholly the liberalizing and broadening contacts common to the practical politician. At times—for example, when the Adamson Law was passed—I heard Republicans, with unflattering intonation, call him the shrewdest politician of his time; but nothing could be farther from the truth. Nominally the head of his party, and with its future prosperity in his hands, he has shown a curious indifference to the maintenance of its morale.
“Produce great men; the rest follows.” The production of great men is not so easy as Whitman imagined; but in eight tremendous years we must ruefully confess that no new and commanding figure has risen in either branch of Congress. Partisanship constantly to the fore, but few manifestations of statesmanship: such is the record. It is well-nigh unbelievable that, where the issues have so constantly touched the very life of the nation, the discussions could have been so marked by narrowness and bigotry. The exercise of autocratic power by a group pursuing a policy of frustration and obstruction is as little in keeping with the spirit of our institutions as a stubborn, uncompromising course on the part of the executive. The conduct of the Republican majority in the Senate is nothing of which their party can be proud.
Four years ago I published some reflections on the low state to which the public service had fallen, and my views have not been changed by more recent history. It would be manifestly unfair to lay at Mr. Wilson’s door the inferiority of the men elected to the Congress; but with all the potentialities of party leadership and his singular felicity of appeal, he has done little to quicken the public conscience with respect to the choice of administrators or representatives. It may be said in his defense that his hours from the beginning were too crowded to permit such excursions in political education; but we had a right to expect him to lend the weight of his authoritative voice and example to the elevation of the tone of the public service. Poise and serenity of temper we admire, but not to the point where it seemingly vanishes into indifference and a callousness to criticism. The appeal two years ago for a Democratic Congress, that the nation’s arm might be strengthened for the prosecution of the war, was a gratuitous slap at the Republican representatives who had supported his war policies, and an affront to the public intelligence, that met with just rebuke. The cavalier discharge of Lansing and the retention of Burleson show an equally curious inability to grasp public opinion.