It has its
value, sentimental as well as practical, for the American people
likes to set up its own political idols. The politicians who for
the moment guide the destinies of the nation are so misdrawn, so
illuminated with virtues and endowed with vices quite foreign to
them, that they frequently achieve a personality quite fictitious,
but which, none the less, passes current in the popular mind as
genuine.
Nothing could be more grotesque, for example, than the picture of
Senator Smoot, who is merely a sublimated messenger boy, as one of
the arbiters of the Republican policies; or of Senator Lodge, by
sheer strength of leadership, restraining the discordant Republican
elements in the Senate from kicking over the traces. This is
journalist "copy" written for a popular imagination which finds the
truth too tepid.
Boies Penrose serves the purpose of appeasing national appetite for
what the magazine editors call "dynamic stuff."
But the real Boies Penrose is not all as he is pictured. At a
cursory glance he might appear to be a physiological,
psychological, and political anachronism. At least he is
sufficiently different from his colleagues to be, if not actually
mysterious, not easily understandable. There is something
fundamental about him. He inspires a certain awe which may not be
magnetic but has the same effect upon those who surround him; where
he sits is the head of the table.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191