Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1928-06-01
The Great
Game of
Politics
By FRANK R. KENT.

more will become the sole news
source in Washington. The BIZ
weekly Conference with the press
which is ridiculous name for
what they really are, will be more
lariely attended and the inspired
articles presenting the Presiden-
tial attitude on Wednesday and
Saturday mornings will increase
in news value, which will be pleas
ing to the President.
So far as he is concerned his
score at this session is exactly the
same as made at each of the pre-
ceding three that have marked his
Administration wit, zero. 1t
is one of the most interesting and
singular phenomena of the present
political period that the popular
illusion of his strength, firmness
and character should continue in
the face of a beebleness and flu
tility the White House equal of
which no one now in politics can
recall.
Through four sessions with his
own party and his own wing Of
his own party in complete control
of House and Senate most of the
time, he has achieved an almost
unbroken record Of failure. With
practical uniformity his recon-
mendations have been disregarded
and he has been consistently un-
able to prevent the passage at each
session of Legislation to which he
was opposed. His Leadership" has
been a cloakroom joke among his
own party people. Belief in his
greatness has been confined en-.
tirely to statesmen of the Fess
type.
The Vice President, General
Dawes, has proven himself infinite
ly stronger as a party leader than
the President. The Coolidge ap-
pointments have time after time
been rejected. Disastrous filibust-
ers that wrecked Administration
appropriation bills and crippled
government bureaus, courts and
commissions, have been conducted
by regular Republican Senators, in
defiance of his wishes. Admins
tration leaders in House and Sen
ate have, with perfect impunity,
voted against him on taxation and
agriculture. The whole legislative
business of the country has been
in a general mess for six years
without adequate direction or con-
troll.
Party leaders breakfasting with
him at the White House have been
unable to penetrate beyond the
solemn vagueness of his express
sions 70 shake his inherent inertia.
Except by the uniformed, the tax
legislation that has marked the
Administration is conceded to have
been automatic and would have &C.
Cured under either party or any
President. Some half dozen or
more of his vetoes have been over
ridden, and at this session not only
was the tax bill as approved by
him practically rewritten in the
House but the two pieces of legis-
lation to which he was opposed
went through-the Mississippi
flood relief and the McNary-H au-
gen farm relief bills.
On the first he surrendered, with
few trivial and face-saving
amendments; the second he vetoed
with a message concededly the
strongest and most red-blooded
since he became President so
strongly worded in fact as to make
reasonable the statement yester-
day on the Senate floor that it was
clearly written for him. This veto
was sustained, and, whether he
wrote his message or not, Mr..
Coolidge deserves credit for the
veto. But that is negative
victory. 1t was defensive, not of.
fensive action. It was last
minute stand against successful
fight made by Mr.. Dawes, and no
affirmative achievement along agri-
cultural or any other lines remains
to the credit of the Administration
at this session.
These things cannot be success
fully disputed. Yet, such is the
indelible impression made by the
early Coolidge propaganda and the
implanted belief that to the So
called Coolidge .nolicies-which his
most ardent admirers find hard to
defne-we owe not only tax and
debt reduction but general pros
perity as well, that his personal
popularity is tremendous and there
is no doubt at all that clear to
the end of his term he will seem
TO the bulk of the people the
''strong, silent" man, which all the
facts prove him naything but.
There are plenty of explana-
tions, interesting but not eonclu-
sive. There is the fact that Pros.
perity absorbs all criticism and
that he is the totem mole of Pros