The Presidential Plateau—First Half [excerpt]
“The President is dead—may
the President live!” That is the American democratic translation
of the familiar Gallic slogan. Genial, wise, well-intentioned President
William McKinley was dead, but the high office continued in the
person of Theodore Roosevelt.
The office of President of the United
States is, presumably, the highest honor which this nation offers.
I figure it as a plateau. The distance across it is the period of
four years. Sometimes the plateau is a double formation, with eight
years the distance; then halfway across it stands an inn, for a
brief night and a relay of horses; then on through the remaining
four years.
To reach the various heights in the
world, Alpine and others, some men toil up long, steep, rocky pathways;
others climb comfortably up an easy grade in cogged-wheel cars,
and still others seem to be shot suddenly, rapidly upward, to the
astonishment of everybody, including themselves.
Abraham Lincoln and many others ascended
[201][202] by the first and most toilsome
route. General Ulysses S. Grant, a military hero, a “man on horseback”,
was carried up rapidly, yet comfortably, by the funicular of popular
enthusiasm. While Chester Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt were hurled
to the plateau’s summit unexpectedly, violently, as volleyed there
by an explosion.
All the wiseacres who, for ten years
and more, had been pointing out defects in Roosevelt’s nature, now
awaited eagerly the full, dark revelation of rashness and inefficiency
at which they had been craftily hinting. And the first shock to
their vanity came when the new incumbent of the White House, with
a wisdom worthy of his great forerunner, model, and ideal, Abraham
Lincoln, at once sent forth this message to an anxious nation:
“In this hour of deep national grief,
I wish to state that it is my aim to continue, absolutely unbroken,
the policy of William McKinley, for the peace, prosperity, and honor
of our beloved country.”
The owlish wiseacres and acrid prophets
of gloom were aghast; and even stanch admiring friends admired the
more the self-restraint, the sagacity of this brilliant young statesman,
here evincing, as always, his singular blending of diverse qualities,
his intellectual grasp so broad that he held at unity in his breast
forces, tendencies, which [202][203]
commonly are mutually antagonistic and inhibitive.
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