That "naturally" sprang I suppose
from his habit of believing that somewhere there is authority.
Somewhere there would be authority to determine what the larger
details of the party's financial policy should be.
Now, this authority is not going to be any one man or any two men.
The President, his friends tell us, is jealous of any assumption of
power by any of his advisers. He is unwilling to have the public
think that any other than himself is President. A man as handsome
as Harding, as vain of his literary style as he is, has an ego that
is not capable of total self-effacement. He will bow to impersonal
authority like that of the party, or invoke the anonymous
governance of "best minds," calling rather often on God as a well
established authority, but he will not let authority be personal
and be called Daugherty, or Lodge or Knox or whomever you will.
The President's attitude is rather like that of the average man
during the campaign. If you said to a voter on a Pullman, "Mr.
Harding is a man of small public experience, not known by any large
political accomplishment," he would always answer optimistically,
"Well, they will see to it that he makes good." Asked who "They"
were he was always vague and elusive, gods on the mountain perhaps.
There is an American religion, the average man's faith: it is
"Them." "They" are the fountain of authority.
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