The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-11-07

WILLIAM HOW
qualities almost all of our presidents
have had.
There is an absolute necessity for
something greater and rarer than
these common virtues. There must be
genius for executive work, physical ca
pacity for the endurance of severe off,
cial strain, patience and tact in deal
ing with other men. which comes only
from the constant buffeting of official
life and a certain predisposition for
the management of public affairs
which may, for want of a better term,
be called the official temperament.
If the people would be well served
they must of necessity select for the
chief of the army and
navy and for the head of the civil
government some one who has the
capacity for executive work at the
outset, and whose whole education and
training has fitted him for the duties
he may be called upon to perform.
There is not a king or an emperor,
no man in civil or military life, who
yields such great individual power.
good or evil. as the president of the
United States.
Power of the President.
Under our system of government.
in spite of the fact that congress
makes all the laws and the courts in
terpret them, and although the preSi-
dent can proceed only along lines care
fully laid down for him in the statute
books. he is. after all, practically
omnipotent in the exercise of real
power.
He defines policies for the govern
ment, both domestic and foreign. He
can save his country from war by
sacrificing its honor, or he can pre-
cipitate his people into a bloody con-
f1ict to satisfy his own ambition or be-
cause of an exaggerated incapacity to
adjust trivial quarrel.
There are presidents and presidents.
One may be a harmless nonentity,
while his successor is quite likely to
prove a menace to the peace and
prosperity of the country. Both were
honest, but both were deficient in
training for their high office.
1t will not do to select a president,
who holds in the hollow of his hand
the destinies of S0,00O,O00 of people
and whose great power may be WELD
ed for the good or the i'll of other ma
tons, merely because he has been
successful in some one line of work
The good general. the popular preach
er, and even the successful governor
of a state, are all likely to be deficient
in the peculiar experience which goes
to fit a man for the highest national
employment.
The presidency is no place for a
specialist. 1t needs the broadest
training the widest experience, the
most general education. and the
surest grasp of the complex machinery
which the American system of govern
ment has developed.
Granting that all the persons now
considered for the presidency have
equal integrity. equal natural in
telligence, and equal devotion to the
interests of the people. it is a proper
inquiry to determine whether any one
of them Is superior to the others in
the peculiar training which is likely to
fit a man for the tremendous re-
sponsibility devolving upon a presi-
dent of the United States in the
opening decade of the twentieth CEN
fury, after more than a hundred years
of successful national life under a Re-
publican form of government
Time Honored Test Suggests Taft
Applying Bonaparte's test question,
What has he done?" for the purpose
OF determining who would make the
best successor to Theodore Roosevelt,
one naturally thinks of William How
ard Taft, If for no other reason. be-
cause his public career has been such
as to give him. in all probability, more
experience as to the different lines
of presidential work than any other
American citizen of the present gen.
Grafton.
BY this is meant merely that his
public career has been such as to
call for the exercise of personal
supervision in an executive capacity
over a wider range Of governm entail
responsibility than any of the other
persons mentioned for the presidency
in any of the parties has been called
upon to assume. The test will be,
therefore, not so much as to Mr.. Taft s
experience, but as to whether he has
made good at all times
That his public experience has been
diversified to an extraordinary de-
gree is scarcely a matter of argument.
1t is fair, and the people have right
to insist, that each of his official acts,
every public responsibility he has
assumed, every policy he has stood
for, and everything he has done from
his boyhood to the present day in his
professional and official life, shall be
subjected to the closest possible
scrutiny, to determine whether he is
htted for the presidency or not
Peculiar Range of Official Life.
1t happens that Secretary Taft has
had a peculiar range of official life,
so that, If he stands the test of what
ne has done in each case If he can
exhibit a record of executive capacity
In half dozen different directions.
extending over long period Of years,
and if he can demonstrate the
adaptability required in sudden
transitions from domestic to foreign
affairs, from the military to civil life,
ana from economics to abstract gov
eminent. the people are likely to as
sumo that he Is the person best fitted
1or the presidency and, accordingly, to
choose MIN for that high office.