The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1916-06-24
WAS 1T MAGNANIMITY?

WAS 1T
Ne were told, while the democratic convention was
in session last week, that a plank had been formulated for
the platform opposing the election to the presidency of any
man who has served upon the supreme bench. We were
also told how graciously but insistently the president
protested against such a plank through a spirit of gen
crosby to his opponent. We are now further informed
that a democratic senator has presented to the senate d
Joint resolution which would make members of the SUI
Dreme court ineligible to the presidency. Now, the presl-
dents course may have been prompted solely by gener-
osity, but the utterances of the St. Louis convention ora
tors and the democratic newspapers, and this proposed
action by the United States senate, are rather amusing
in the light of the following declaration and pledge of the
convention which nominated Mr.. Wilson and the platform
through which he appealed to the people for their votes
four years ago. Here is the language OF that pledge:
Term of rresdent-We fwor a single presidential term,
Constitution making the pes dent Of the United States in
eligible % re election, and we pledge the candidate of this
convention to this principle.
The same Ollie James and William J. Bryan and
Champ Clark and Martin II. Glynn and other leaders who
pledged Mr.. Wilson at Baltimore ito this principle were
the same Ollie James and Champ Clark and Martin H.
Glynn who last week urged the nomination of the candi-
date they had pledged against the principle" of a re-
election, and out of the Io47 delegates 1916, or all but one,
followed them. What binding force upon their own
party would their proposed new plank have had? Or did
they intend to bind only their opponents? And was Mr..
Wilson's protest prompted solely by magnanimity?
And we find the newspaper supporters of Mr.. Wilson,
who are so deeply outraged over the nomination of Mr..
IluSHtS, Wlol 10 party anu no platform ever declared
morally, politically or otherwise ineligible, forgetting en-
tirely that the party that nominated Mr.. Wilson had by
its own declaration or that he by his own declaration
had made Mr.. Wilson ineligible in "principle" to succeed
himself.
We find in the Nevada News Letter of last Saturday
a page and a half devoted to the improperly of Mr..
Hughes candidacy without a word about the imprO-
nrietv of nominating a candidate who had pledged him
self and his party, and whose party had pledged itself and
him. against a reelection.
The only valid objection against the nomination of
Hughes that has come to the Tribune is that it may es-
tablish a precedent under which a man of the Brandeis
type, the political crusader, may seek the office and pro-
mote his candidacy from the bench. 1t has never been
charged, it never will be charged, that Mr.. Hughes nomi-
nation was due in any measure to anything he has said
or done during his service on the bench. He was a-
pointed to that position by reason of public service in
other fields. He asked that he be not nominated, and
that no delegate be selected or instructed in his interest
adjourned that he would have preferred the nomination of
another. He was not nominated because of his position
on the bench, or what he did there, but in spite of it.
Reference is made to the protest against the candi-
dacy of Justice Salmon P. Chase. 1t is true the democrats
the bench. not even because he was an avoWed and active
candidate, but because they believed they had a stronger
candidate in the person of Horatio Seymour.
There are, no doubt, many republicans who would
have preferred to nominate Mr.. Hughes from some other
position than the one he has recently occupied, but no
nomination ever came to a candidate as a higher tribute
to his official integrity, his public service or his patriotism,
or did any man who has observed that service, honestly
c--estiOn or sincerely doubt his courage or his state OF
mind on any big question affecting the power, the integ-
ritv. the unity or the Americanism of this republic. Those
who questioned it questioned it not from doubt.
In any event the people will ask Mr.. Wilson and his
advocates a good many times to explain their reputation
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