The man in the street: Papers on American topics

by Meredith Nicholson

Some candidate for the doctorate, hard put for a subject, might find it profitable to produce a thesis on American political phraseology. As a people we are much addicted to felicitous combinations of words that express large ideas in the smallest possible compass. Not only does political wisdom lend itself well to condensation, but the silliest fallacy will carry far if knocked into a fetching phrase. How rich in its connotations even to-day is the old slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”! and many others equally illuminative of a period might be dug out of the records from the beginning of our history, including “the tariff is a tax,” “the full dinner-pail,” down to “he kept us out of war.” A telling phrase or a catchword is enormously persuasive and convincing—the shrewdest possible advertisement.

There is no way of knowing how many of our hundred millions ever read a national platform, but I will hazard the guess that not more than twenty-five per cent have perused the platforms of 1920 or will do so before election day. The average voter is content to accept the interpretations and laudatory comment of his party paper, with its assurance that the declaration of principles and purposes is in keeping with the great traditions of the grand old party. It is straining Smith’s patriotism pretty far to ask him to read a solid page of small type, particularly when he knows that much of it is untrue and most of it sheer bunk. Editorial writers and campaign orators read platforms perforce; but to Smith they are fatiguing to the eye and a weariness to the spirit. The primary qualification for membership on a platform committee is an utter lack—there must be no question about it—of a sense of humor. The League of Nations plank of the Republican platform is a refutation of the fallacy that we are a people singularly blessed with humor. We could ask no more striking proof of the hypnotic power of a party name than the acceptance of this plank, solemnly sawed, trimmed, and painted red, white, and blue, in the committee-room, and received by the delegates with joyous acclamation.

III

The embarrassments of the partisan who is challenged to explain the faith that is in him are greatly multiplied in this year of grace. Considerable literature is available as to the rise and development of the two major parties, but a student might exhaust the whole of it and yet read the Chicago and San Francisco platforms as through a glass darkly. There is a good deal of Jeffersonian democracy that is extremely difficult to reconcile with many acts of Mr. Wilson. The partisan who tries to square his Democracy or his Republicanism with the faith he inherited from his grandfather is doomed to a severe headache. The rope that separates the elephant from the donkey in the menagerie marks only a nominal difference in species: they eat the same fodder and, when the spectator’s back is turned, slyly wink at each other. There is a fine ring to the phrase “a loyal Republican” or “a loyal Democrat,” but we have reached a point of convergence where loyalty is largely a matter of tradition and superstition. What Jefferson said on a given point, or what Hamilton thought about something else, avails little to a Democrat or a Republican in these changed times. We talk blithely of fundamental principles, but are still without the power to visualize the leaders of the past in newly developed situations of which they never dreamed. To attempt to interview Washington as to whether he intended his warning against entangling alliances to apply to a League of Nations to insure the peace of the world is ridiculous; as well invoke Julius Cæsar’s opinion of present-day questions of Italian politics.

Delightful and inspiring as it would doubtless be, we can’t quite trust the government to the counsels of the ouija-board. The seats of the cabinet or of the supreme bench will hardly be filled with table-rapping experts until more of us are satisfied of the authenticity of the communications that purport to be postmarked oblivion. We quote the great spirits of the past only when we need them to give weight and dignity to our own views. (Incidentally, a ouija-board opinion from John Marshall as to the propriety of tacking a police regulation like the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution would be first-page stuff for the newspapers.)

Monroe was luckier than most of our patriarchs. The doctrine associated with his name is jealously treasured by many patriotic Americans who haven’t the slightest idea of the circumstances that called it forth; but to mention it in a discussion of international affairs is to stamp the speaker as a person of breeding, endowed with intellectual gifts of the highest order. If by some post-mortem referendum we could “call up” Monroe to explain just how far America might safely go in the defense of his doctrine, and whether it could be advantageously extended beyond the baths of all the western stars to keep pace with such an expansion as that represented by the Philippines, we might profit by his answer—and again, we might not.

We can’t shirk our responsibilities. One generation can’t do the work of another. In the last analysis we’ve got to stand on our own feet and do our own thinking. The Constitution itself has to be interpreted over and over again, and even amended occasionally; for the world does, in spite of all efforts to stop it, continue to move right along. This is not a year in which either of the major parties can safely harp upon its “traditional policy.” There are skeletons in both closets that would run like frightened rabbits if dragged into the light and ordered to solve the riddles of 1920.

The critics of President Wilson have dwelt much on the vision of the founders, without conceding that he too may be blessed with a seer’s vision and the tongue of prophecy. To his weaknesses as a leader I shall revert later; but his high-mindedness and earnest desire to serve the nation and the world are questioned only by the most buckramed hostile partisan, or by those who view the present only through the eyes of dead men.

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.