To elevate the President it was necessary to depress Congress. It became the fashion to speak sneeringly of the Legislative branch, to sympathize with presidents who "had Congress on their hands," to write of "the shame of the Senate," and when any issue existed between the two parts of the government to throw the force of public opinion on the side of the executive. The press printed endless criticism of the Senate and the House. Theories of government were invented to reduce Congress to a subordinate place.
Meanwhile Congress, having regard for the character of its membership, was agreed that incompetence should suffer no disabilities. All that was required for political preferment within it was political longevity.
The seniority rule, by which committee chairmanships went not to ability but to long service, favored mediocrity and second childhood. Even more, incompetence banded together jealously to protect itself against competence and shunted it into minor assignments. While the public was regarding Congress with contempt Congress was well satisfied to make itself contemptible.
Suppose we had developed a capacity for breeding statesmen in this country, which we have not, would any man of first-class talents seek a public career in such an institution as I have described? In the first place, the people were visiting Congress with indifference, or worse than indifference, and ambition will not serve under indifference. In the next place that great power which makes legislatures dominant, the power to tax and to distribute the fruits of taxation, had become temporarily unimportant; and again, Congress itself was organized for self-protection against brains and character.
Senator Root quit the Senate in disgust. Senator Kenyon has just followed his example in even deeper disgust. A Tammany Congressman after one term said, "They tie horses to Congressmen in Washington."
Congress is upon the whole a faithful reflection of the American political consciousness. Democracy is a relatively new thing. It has not taken hold of the minds and hearts of men. Shadowy and half-unconscious faiths dispute its place. De Gourmont writing of the persistence of Paganism in Catholicism, says that no religion ever dies but lives on in its successor. So no government ever dies but lives on in its successor. Why take the trouble to govern yourselves when your vital interests are so well directed by the higher governments, of Progress, of economic Forces, of heroes and captains of industry who ruled by a sort of divine right? The less you try to muddle through by means of poor human instruments in this well-ordered world the better.
For the limited tasks of self-government, why should special talents be required? We are still near enough the pioneer age to adhere to pioneer conceptions. Roosevelt, unfortunately, is the national ideal.
We look hopefully for great amateurs like him among insurance agents, building contractors, lawyers, country editors, bankers, retiring, with modest fortunes made, into public life. We put the jack of all trades everywhere. Into the Presidency—and I don't know why we should not in that office, for it is a waste of material and a misdirection of effort in self-government to throw away a first-class public man on a four-year job. Into the Senate and the House, into the Cabinet, where a lawyer without previous experience of international affairs conducts our foreign relations in the most difficult period of the world's history, matching the power of his country against the wits of other countries' practiced representatives, and thus obtaining a certain forbearance of their extreme skill.
Into the diplomatic posts, where an editor, Colonel Harvey, noted only for his audacity, holds the most important ambassadorship. Those who have seen the Colonel at meetings of the Supreme Council tell the amazing story that he was a silent and uneasy figure in the conferences of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Briand, perhaps because he is only an observer, perhaps also because he was in the company of practiced statesmen and diplomats.
However, our system has its compensations. The picture of the robustious Colonel uneasy in Zion is one of them.