His
mental habits bewilder the President, shock the proper and somewhat
conventional Secretary of State, and throw such repositories of
national divinity as Senators Lodge and Knox into utter confusion.
Harvey plays the game of politics according to his own rules, the
underlying principle of which is audacity. He knows very well that
the weak spot in the armor of nearly all politicians of the old
school is their assumption of superiority, a sort of mask of
benignant political venerability. They dread satire. They shrink
from ridicule. A well-directed critical outburst freezes them.
Such has been the Harvey method of approach. Having reduced his
subjects to a state of terror, he flatters them, cajoles them, and
finally makes terms with them; but he always remains a more or less
unstable and uncertain quantity, potentially explosive.
There is not much of the present Harvey to be gleaned from his
earlier experiences, except the pertinacity that has had much to do
with his irregular climb up the ladder. He was born in Peacham,
Vermont, where as a boy after school hours he mounted a stool in
his father's general store and kept books. At the end of the year
his accounts were short a penny. Because of this he received no
Christmas gift not, as he has said, because his father begrudged
the copper more than any other Vermont storekeeper, but because he
was meticulously careful himself and expected the younger
generation to be likewise.
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