The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-11-23

| Pennsylvania Avenue on March 4,
| 1909, it was the first time since Jack
, son and Van RIren had passed that
way side by side. more than 70 years
before, that a retiring president would
not have preferred another seat mate
| and successor than the one whom the
! fortunes of politics had thrust upon
! him. Perhaps already dear Theo-
dore' and dear WIFI were not wholly
pleased with each other.
The presidency is too big a gift Tor
any man to make or for any man to
accept. The giver humanity cannot
help expecting more gratitude than
the recipient humanity can acknowl-
edge.
! Roosevelt alone had selected his
| successor He forced his enemies to
accept him with the terrifying threat:
IF ynu don't take Taft. you'll have
to take me-" And he had to set a
watch on his own friends to keep hem
from stampeding the convention to
! him. -
Naturally, everyone assumed that
we were to have a Roosevelt admin
istrati0n by another name, and it was
expected in the campaign that the ex-
| president would not go farther away
from the White House than Oyster
Bay Instead he plunged into the
depths of Africa. He might as well,
when he was a ranchman, have flung
a Eastern guest of the back Of a buck
! mig brOnchO and abandoned him to
his own resources. For Taft was an
utter tenderfoot in politics.
| The fate Of William Howard Taft
would be pathetic if he himself had
not met it and borne it with a smile.
! He did not invite it, having no taste
for political life and he was without
the least desire for the presidency
when Roosevelt made him his heir.
He was ADLER, more upright, more
! independent that some far more sue
cessful presidents But by bent and
training he was a judge, and the
The only other president who had sat
on a bench was-of all men-Andrew
! Jackson, and odd Hickory" seems
not to have acquired overmuch of the
! judicial temperament.
Executive force and the judicial
mind are the positive and negative
poles of the battery. If president
stops to weigh the evidence. consult
procedents and prepare an opinion,
enterprises of great pith and moment
are turned awry and lose the name of
action. In the crisis that make or
| break his administration and his lead
crship he must decide on his instincts
his ,intuitions and find his reasons
afterward.
Taft passed all but two of the first
20 years of his manhood in courts.
either as a law officer or a judge AS
he took a train in Ohio on certain
day in the year 1899. he had no other
wish than to spend his life in the
same congenial atmosphere. But on
that Hateful train he fell in with Gen
Corbin of the army, until then a stran-
ger to him, and the general returned
to Washington with the enthusiastic
conviction that he had discovered the
right man to give a code of laws to
the Philippine Islands.
Taft earnestly protested. when Nc
kinley sent for him, that he wished to
stay on the bench but he was talked
into going. Four years afterward
Roosevelt offered him a justiceship in
the supreme court of the United
States, the highest honor to which his
heart ever had aspired. But he put
aside the temptation from a pure
sense of duty to his little brown
brother"
AS lawgiver and governor of Manila
Orienta! subjects. and rather than de-
sert his post, before his task was fin
iShed he sacrificed the dearest ambi-
ton of his life. In year and half
Roosevelt had him in his cabinet as
secretary of War-and soon had him in
his eye for the presidency.
Roosevelt had the weakness of his
strength. He thought he was strong
enough to make a president. But real
presidents are born, not made
The moment Roosevelt was gone.
the staDdpatters, the reactionary
forces, emerged from their IL years
in the cyclone cellar. The moment
the political broncho felt the tender
foot on its back, it bucked and threw
Taft from the seat of leadership. The |
next thing the rank and file of Repub- |
licans knew, the party was slipping
back into the old rut from which !
Roosevelt had jerked it when first he |
laid upon it his masterful hand
But the people refused TO go back. |
Eight months after Taft's Inaugural
ton. the election of 1909 sounded a !