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.