The Mena weekly star., 1916-11-23
.BILLn WHITE EXPLAINS IT.
Bull Moose Couldn't Forgive the Chi
 cago Convention, the Editor Says.

t"Ho NVHNthduttt tht h<aiNof 1dScs W. A. White in the Emporia Gazette.
 This is a Republican country in spite of the fact that the President, and the Congress, are strongly and partisanly Democratic. and soon we shall have Democratic majority in the Supreme court and lower federal .eourls lhc Republlcanism of this country is indicated by the fact that Ia majority of the states outside of the solid south elected Republican governors and Republican legisla- lures. and an overwhelming majority of Republican local officers.
 In 1881 the mugwumps elected Cleveland. In 1916 the independent vote. largely Bull Moose, elected Wilson.
 They buried the Bull Moose with a bullet in his heart last June, but his ghost got into the ballot box, and President Wilson may thank his lucky stars that the Moosers gave him a second term. Yet he and they have mutually low opinion Of one another.
 Then why did they vote for him? Why was he elected2
 Mixed motives governed more or less. The cold blooded group that sat in the Republican convention this summer and shrewdly nomin- ated Hughes to beat Roosevelt, of tended the average citizen of this Republic-of whatever partisan af- illiation, about as seriously as the same group offended the country four years ago The Republican convention stagnated enthusiasm. after 1t adjourned no one cared much what happened. So it hap pened
 Then the President, who is the most adroit and skillful manipulator of public opinion who ever has sat in the White House, played the wise hand He Kept harping upon the al- truistic note. He insisted upon dis cussing economic measures, and he had laid the ground for the discus sion, by forcing a number of impor- tant and largely progressive meas ures thru Congress.
 These measures appealed to the independent vote. The country had been clamoring for these economic changes for two decades. So the President had a talking point. And he talked plausibly. He made votes.
 Hughes lost votes from the day he began to speak. He could have been elected in June. But his managers had no sense, and counselling with them he made campaign of criti- cisms. and no Republican mind ever was captured by negation and carp ing. And as the negation and carp ing went on, the soul went out of the campaign for the Republicans, and Wilson stock rose.
 It was not so much that Wilson kept us out of war, as Hughes kept us out of oflice-and that all in the best of intention. but under bad ad- vice. For this is Republican eoun- try and when the Republican party Noi 70 VI hftbiu lb itN iViiclIufllNf, hopeful. positive attitude upon pub lie questions. it will return to power and will give the government the only effective government it will get.
 It is curious that We have Demo- cratic administration elected in this country with all the Republican, ism that is obvious in the lower lev els of government. But until the Republican party reorganizes and reconstructs it's present leadership we shall have the party of obstruc- tion in power, and we would shake hands with the Fates over the gIo- rious fact that at the head of that party is so shrewd a reader of his- tory as Woodrow Wilson. For he is jealous of but one thing. which will hold him in check: The opin- ion of posterity And that opinion, he can read as an expert, A leader of Democracy like Mir. Champ Clark in power might make the angels weep and the high gods shudder!
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