Root would
"put something over on him." A certain moral quality in Mr. Hughes
outweighed Mr. Root's special experience and wider reputation.
Mr. Roosevelt used to tell a story boastfully of his own
practicality which throws much light on Mr. Root and upon the
reason for Mr. Root's comparative failure as a public man.
"When I took Panama," he would say, "I found all the members of my
Cabinet helpful except one. Mr. Root readily found numerous
precedents. Mr. Taft was sympathetic and gave every assistance
possible. Mr. Knox alone was silent. At last I turned to him in the
Cabinet meeting and I said, 'I should like to hear from the
Attorney General on the legality of what we are doing.' Mr. Knox
looked up and said, 'Mr. President, if I were you I should not have
the slightest taint of legality about the whole affair.'"
Such was Mr. Root. Public questions always were likely to occur to
him first as exercises in mental adroitness rather than as moral
problems. His extremely agile mind finds its chief pleasure in its
own agility. Then he was always the advocate, always instinctively
devoting himself to bolstering up another man's cause for him.
"He is a first class second," said Senator Penrose, objecting to
him as a candidate for President at the Republican Convention of
1916, "but he is not his own man."
He is always someone else's mouthpiece and publicly he is chiefly
remembered as Mr.
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