The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-26
THE IMPRESSIVE PERSONALITY.


George William Curtis supported Cleve-
land for denomination as ''by far the most
impressive personality in the Democratic
party" This impressive Democratic per-
sonality" would seem to be vanishing like
mist before the rising sun Of David B.
Hills victory in New York state. Cieve-
land has been formally abandoned by
Mills, Vest and Watterson, and now an
other old time admirer Of Cleveland,
Springer of Illinois, has abandoned all
hope Of his nomination. Outside OF the
New York and New England Mugwumps
''the impressive personality" IS rapidly
losing its power to Empress"
A great political party would be in bad
straits if Grover Cleveland was ''by far its
most impressive personality" for Mr..
Cleveland's ''impressiveness" is rather
more apparent when you place him upon
a platform scales than when you weigh
him in mental balance. impressive per-
sonality'' is an ambiguous expression.
Falstaff, Ananias, Alya, Guy Fawkes,
Heliogabalus and Washington we're all
Impressive personalities" but for very
different reasons. A man may be i'm
pressive for obesity, mendacity, voracity,
or for moral dignity, austerity and veracity.
Before Cleveland became governor of New
York ne was nothing but coarse
grained manipulation of Democratic
ward politics in Buffalo; heavy
feeder, n most valiant and enduring
trencherman, washing down his daily
barbecue with an Amazonian flood of
beer. He was local statesman of such
marked intellectual apathy and physical
inertia in the green and salad days of
bachelorhood that he became known to
fame as the "Sitting Bull' of the saloon
and the Daniel Lambert of the whist
table When he was made governor OF
New York he had grown so absolutely
fat-witted with drinking of old sack and
unbuttoning him after supper and Sleep
ing on benches after noon that "the Fat
Boy" in Pickwick was his peer in mental
sprightliness and his superior in affability
of manners and temper. The official
drudgery of his Office reused him from his
trance he lived more clearly and grew
more alert in body and mind. The
drudgery of the presidential Office and his
vain expectation of reelection served to
keep him comparatively agile and ami
mated until his defeat, when he returned,
like a sulky, sleepy Saxon, tired of war
and the chase, to the Incidence and ami
malism of private life.
Since his defeat in November, 1883,
Cleveland has done nothing but pose as
an involuntary exile from the White
House; he has taken off his hat to great
many people; he has written a great many
magniloquent letters in response to DEM
ocratic gatherings, large and small; he
has delivered number of oracular, plati-
tudinous speeches. The great reform
war" in the Democratic party is over with
the describing of Cleveland. He came up
to battle with screaming fife and thunder
ing drum, and today the Mugwump string
bands are playing dirges for their dead
soldier. The voice of the political
reform" pelican is hushed and his insa-
tiate bill must fish in other than Mug
wump waters for food, for they do not
afford enough to sustain life.
Cleveland's soldiership and generalship
are no longer a matter of uncertainty. If
Cleveland had from the day of his inaug-
uration in 1885 correctly measured him
self as political accident and taken coun-
sci generally with the legitimate leaders of
his party, like Thurman, Hendricks and
Randall, he quite possibly might have
been reelected in 1sSs, but acted as if he
was an intellectual autocrat with the pow
ers of an autocrat. His messages were
written in the dogmatic tone of Russian
ukase; he behaved in Office consistent with
his past record as an uncured, incurable
copperhead; relentless Bourbon, who had
neither learned anything nor forgotten
anything since the tocsin of Grants guns at
Appomattox tolled the last alarm of the
great war for the Union. His egotism, his
obstinacy, his contempt for patriotic pub
lie opinion his stoiidity, his contempt for
the opinions and advice of the ablest and
highest-toned men of his party while
president were all the incidental marks of
narrow and purely provincial life and
experience. Before a happy accident
made him the compromise candidate of a
discordant Democracy for the governor
ship of New York, Cleveland at 10 years
of age, was rated as nothing more than a
healthy, athletic, phlegmatic, mediocre
man; a commonplace office lawyer, some
what notorious rs a cold-blooded, selfish
creature, who preferred the animal pleas
ures of this world unmlxed bv any associ-
alton with the moral responsibilities and
anxieties of domestic life.
Beyond a considerable capacity for OK
like drudgery that is common to all in
dustrious Office lawyers, and the limited
political astuteness acquired as ward
politician in Buffalo, Mr.. Cleveland does
not seem to have any ability in particular
to justify his further impressment into
public service. He is not a scholar. not a
diplomatist; not a jurist. not an orator
not refined gentleman; he is without the
business knowledge and versatile aptitude
that makes an able man of affairs; he is Il
commonplace, cheap, utterly uninterest-
ing person in the estimation of the Amcri-
can people, and it is this measure of him,
quite as much as the specific blunders Of
his administration, that is at the
bottom Of the steadily growing disgust
for him in the Democratic party Of New
York which is expressed by his easy and
complete rout by David L. Hill. you
g., -.