Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1906-11-16
ISSUES OF 1908.
Indications of the Next National Line Up,

Indications of the Next National Line Up.
st. Louis Republic.
According to all present indications
the paramount issue of the next Presi-
dental campaign will be tariff and the
trusts-parsicularly the trusts created
aud protected by Federal legislation
The Democrats of Iowa, following those
OF Missouri and other States, have
given courageous emphasis to this
issue, which was even timorously
voiced by the Iowa Republican Con.
vention. 1t is already living, burn
ing issue, therefore.
But there is chance of another and
still graver issue passing to the front
as the one OF real paramount impor-
tance. Now that the threatening per-
sonality of Bryan grows bigger day by
day in the eyes OF Republican politi-
Clans, the talk of Roosevelt as the Re.
publican nominee increases. Bryan's
strength is confessed in the frantic
appeal of panic stricken Republicans
for Roosevelt. 1t is not a case OF any
body to beat Bryan, but an almost
unanimous chorus that nobody but
Roosevelt can beat him.
No one can say yet what the Re-
publican Convention will do, and no
one is, at this day, justified in charg-
ing that President Ro osevelt will yield
to the clamor of the Repu blican ma
chine and forswear himself on the
principle of a third tern. But it is,
none the less, easy to see now how the
issue his denomination would create,
if he should consent to run again,
would instantly subordinate every
other political question and become
the paramount issue of the 1908 cam.
paign.
Nor would it be possible to present
this issue to the American people
under conditions that would more
sharply and clearly define its vital
character. The personality Of General
Grant gave to his third term aspira-
tions far less of dangerous import
shan the peculiarly dominating nature
OF Mr.. Roosevelt would attach to his
candidacy. Grant, too, was open and
above board in the endeavor to further
his ambition, whereas Roosevelt can
only take nomination as Caesar took
his crown.
Grant as President recognized the
constitutional limitations OF the exec.
utive arm OF the Government, and at
tempted no encroachments upon those
fields reserved exclusively for the legis.
lative and judicial branches. The ca.
reer of Roosevelt in the Presidential
Office, on the other hand, has been
marked by numerous and steadily
multiplying instances of usurpation OF
powers not granted the executive by
the Constitution and never assumed
by any of his predecessors in the White
House. Enumeration OF these is uu.
necessary. as they will readily suggest
themselves to any reader at all famil-
lar with American pnblic affairs.
Confronted with this emergency, 90
obviously a possibility of 1908, Mr..
Bryan has Enthusiastically given
frank expression of his own views to
the friends with whom he can talk
with freedom. He is not yet formally
. candidate for the Democratic nomi-
nation, but he does not pretend to shut
his eyes to the fact that conditions are
likely to take such shape that he will
again carry the Democratic banner.
In that event, he has said in private
conversation, he will accompany his
acceptance, as he did in 1896 and as
Judge Parker did in 1904, by a solemn
pledge that he will not be q candidate
for . second term.
Can anyone doubt what would be
the paramount issue in 1908 under
these circumstancesf Bryan-Roose-
welt. A pledge against . second term
"A grapple for q third. C@sarism
would not be an idle cry and the
American people would be called upon
to decide, frst Of all and above every.
thing, whether they are ready to aban-
don that unwritten law that hereto
fore has been as sacredly observed as
anything in the formal covenants OF
the Constitution.