Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

by Clinton W. Gilbert

Thus the executive headship was wholly inconsistent with government by parties, upon which our magnified President was supposed to rest. A further inconsistency was that we adopted another theory for strengthening one man power. This was that the President was the leader of the people. Have we a government by parties there? Not at all; the power of the executive rests upon something outside of and superior to parties.

If the legislative did not respond to pressure he might "go to the people," as it was called, through the newspapers and upon the stump. He might discipline the recalcitrant by stirring up public sentiment against them. He might build up a personal following to such an extent that his party must have it in order to win. He might encourage the movement away from parties by attaching people to ideas and measures, policies that the party had declined to accept. In this theory of executive power it was conceded that parties were not to be trusted. In the other it was held that they were a necessary link between the dissociate branches of government.

It is no exaggerated notion that executive control of parties contributed to the disintegration of party government. It is nothing more than a statement of what actually happened. Roosevelt broke up the Republican party nationally. He left it with its name covering an agglomeration of groups and blocs and personal followings, supporters of various interests difficult to reconcile, whose votes fluctuate from year to year.

Mr. Hughes, the same kind of executive and party leader as governor of New York, left the Republicans of that state in the hands of the little local banditti. Mr. La Follette, following the same methods as Governor of Wisconsin, left no one in that state definitely a Republican or a Democrat. Every voter there is the personal follower of some chieftain.

And what virtue is there in the theory that the Executive alone represents the national point of view, that he alone speaks "for the country?" Political inertia always finds good excuses.

There are reasons why the President should try to represent the country as a whole, since he is elected in a nationwide balloting. But there is no reason why he should succeed in representing the country as a whole, why he should have a national point of view.

Why should Mr. Harding have a vast understanding of national problems and a clear sense of the country's will? A little while ago he was a Senator, and the supposition that the Executive alone has the national point of view implies that a Senator has not that point of view. Mr. Harding is chosen President and immediately upon his election by some magic virtue of his office he is endowed with insight and imagination which he did not possess as Senator.

Mr. Harding is a good average President, a typical President, whether of the United States or of a business corporation, just the kind of man to put at the head of a going concern where a plodding kind of safeness is required of the executive. We shall do well, should our standards of public life remain what they are, if we have three Presidents superior to Mr. Harding in energy or originality of mind, during the whole of the coming century. But why should Mr. Harding understand or represent the national point of view?

Mr. Harding lived his life in the indolent comfortable mental atmosphere of a small town. His horizon was narrow and there was no force in him which made him seek to widen it. His public experience before coming to Washington consisted of brief service in the Ohio State legislature and a term as Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio. His service in the Senate at Washington was short and it was beginner's work, undertaken in the spirit of a man who finds the upper house a pleasant place in which to pass the latter years of a never strenuous life.

His point of view on national problems was a second-hand point of view. He knew about them what his party had said about them, in its platforms, on the stump, in the press. He accepted the accepted opinions. No magic wrought by election to the Presidency could make of him or of anyone else a great representative of the national purpose or endow him or anyone else with deep understanding of national problems.