But, for some reason, probably temperamental, he
is in the habit of dwelling upon the dangers that beset the
republic--dangers which are sometimes very real. Nevertheless an
hour in his presence is more often than not depressing; it leaves
one with a sense of impending calamity. There are few bright spots
on his horizon.
It is not altogether to his discredit that his more venerable
colleagues look upon him as a young man--he is fifty-six; nor does
it imply merely arrested political development. For all of his
pessimism he maintains a certain freshness, if belligerency, of
spirit which is puzzling not only to those who have long since
accustomed themselves to the party yoke but to those whom
experience has taught the art of compromise. For Borah hates the
discipline that organization entails, in spite of his respect for
organization, and he dislikes compromise however often he is driven
to it.
This may be accounted for by the fact that he was not obliged to
fight his way laboriously upward on the lower rungs of politics--he
landed in the Senate from an Idaho law office in one pyrotechnical
leap when he was only forty two--and by the fact that in his make-
up he is singularly unpolitical. Disassociating him from his
senatorial environment it is much easier to imagine him as a
devotee of academic culture, a university professor, a moral
crusader, even a poet, than as a politician.
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