"Just
folks" Kuppenheimered, movieized, associated pressed folks.
Men debate whether or not Mr. Wilson was a great man and they will
keep on doing so until the last of those passes away whose judgment
of him is clouded by the sense of his personality. But men will
never debate about the greatness of Mr. Harding, not even Mr.
Harding himself. He is modest. He has only two vanities, his vanity
about his personal appearance and his vanity about his literary
style.
The inhibitions of a presidential candidate, bound to speak and say
nothing, irked him.
"Of course I could make better speeches than these" he told a
friend during the campaign, "but I have to be so careful."
In his inaugural address he let himself go, as much as it is
possible for a man so cautious as he is to let himself go. It was a
great speech, an inaugural to place alongside the inaugurals of
Lincoln and Washington, written in his most capable English,
Harding at his best. It is hard for a man to move Marion for years
with big editorials, to receive the daily compliments of Dick
Cressinger and Jim Prendergast, without becoming vain of the power
of his pen. It is his chief vanity and it is one that it is hard
for him who speaks or writes to escape. He has none of that egotism
which makes a self-confident man think himself the favorite of
fortune.
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