His dark habit of thought hung over his campaign
for the presidential nomination of 1920, preventing his making a
real effort in many states, and lay in the way of his success. He
has few friends, love having been left out of his make-up. I do not
speak of family affection--but love in its larger implications.
Those who surround him--clerks and secretaries--have the air of
repressed, starving personalities.
That which gathers the crowds and sets them shouting is not his
magnetism but the perfect expression of their passion. For them and
for it he is a sounding board. His voice with its hard angry tone,
its mechanical rise and fall, has the ring of a hundred guillotines
in operation. Having little culture, unintellectual, he is
primitive as the mass before him. He talks their language and an
instinct all his own gives him an exact sense of their emotions.
And what he says leaves the impression of tremendous sincerity. His
sincerity does not arise from reasoned convictions but from hatred;
deep and abiding hatred.
Senator Borah once said, "The difference between Johnson and me is
that I regard questions from the point of view of principles while
he regards them from the point of view of personalities. When a man
opposes me I do not become angry at him. On the next issue he may
agree with me. When a man opposes Johnson he hates him.
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