The evening world. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1887-1931, 1920-06-15
STILL FAR FROM TT.

low much thought are the American people
giving to the character and results of the
Republican National Convention as showing
whether considered as carrying out of the popular
will methods of selecting party candidate for the
Presidency are improving or deterioratlngi
A national party convention Is still assumed IN
theory to express the prevailing judgment and
wishes Of some millions Of voters
Bur, as The Evening World asked last week,
what becomes of this theory when of 0S2 delegates
assembled as popular representatives to perform
an important deliberatlve duty not one delegate
Is discussed as anything more than a vote that some
powerful dictator or other can control and deliver
while the strongest manipulative force In the whole
assembly comes over long distance telephone wire
from a sick-room In Philadelphia
In recent years an elaborate system of primary
voting has been developed and extended in many
States with the express idea of giving the people a
more direct influence IN the selection of Presidential
candidates
How Is this influence progressing as measured by
the popularity and fitness of the candidate picked
for the Republican Party by its professional man
agersi
VIII Senator Harding, Republican nominee for
President, qualify as a fine flower of the primary
sySteml
The crowds that filled the galleries at the Chicago
Convention were fairly representative of the larger
mass Of Republican voters.
The galleries at the convention cheered the name
of Herbert Hoover to the echo.
The delegates on the foor-representatives In
theory7-mustered at most only nine votes for Her
bert Hoover.
Does this square with accepted notions of rep
resentation and with the hopedfor changes the prl-
maries were to bring about1
The political experts assert that the proceedings
of the Republican National Convention were
mapped out by the party bosses six months ahead,
before single delegate was elected
The Evening Worlds correspondent, David Law
renee sees in the preconventlon planning and sub
sequent dictation of the Republican managers "the
final breakdown of the American primary system
so far as selecting Presidential nominees is con-
cerned"
Every student of American history knows that
not since the election of George Washington has
President of the United States been chosen as the
trainers of the Federal Constitution meant him to
be chosen. 3.
The people at once departed from the idea of
the Consttuton-makers on this point and steadily
tended toward the direct popular election of the
President, though retaining the prescribed constitu
tional method
With the development of the party system and
the growing power Of professional party managers
came the need of protecting the nomination as well
as the election of Presidential candidates from the
dictation of party bosses. Hence the extension of
primary voting.
The primaries are on trial.
They have not prevented a group of Republican
Senators from running the 1920 Republican Ma
tonal Convention their own way and imposing
upon the Republican Party candidate who could
by no stretch Of imagination be called popular
choice.
Whether the fault is in the defects of the pri-
mary system or in the failure of voters to use the
system in the way it should be used is a matter for
serious study.
The Chicago Convention at least shows the no.
ton that the people Of the United States pick their
Presidential candidates to be further than ever from
fact.
nh.