Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

Mr. Aldrich is the second generation. In Mr. Penrose and Mr. Lodge you reach what is a common phase of American family history, the eccentric generat

ontemptuous of the old house that founded his fortunes, who is half highbrow, who perhap

nate Foreign Relations Committee. But perhaps it would be fairer to Mr. Lodge to say of him what a witty friend of mine did, "Lodge is what Henry James would have been i

interest in foreign affairs when redder-blooded Americans were happily ignorant of them. If business had been choosing spokesmen at Washington it

sman. I doubt it. Senator Penrose was that other son of the family in wh

uld stop at nothing. He'd even represent the selfish interests here in Washington." Therefore it was considered that he must represent them. And he

espectable of Americans, the highly successful man who has played for and won a great fortune. Aldr

went to him, as the elders sometimes go to the young parson, and said, "The organization thinks the people would like it better if you were married," "All right, boys, if you think so," Penrose repl

s required than his outbreak in 1920, "I won't have the internation

age to be. He lived up to the aristocratic tradition, at its worst; which everyone admires, especially at its worst. He did on

whispered. He had the clear mind which comes from scorn of pretense. But all this is not greatness, nor is it leadership. The Republicans in the Se

, one of whom will succeed Mr. Lodge when he dies, retires, or is retired, and the other of whom wi

in party or in national sentiment. Neither of them has the romantic quality of Mr. Penrose or Mr. Lodge. Nei

ing itself on a petty scale. Look at the rather shabby clothes that Senator Curtis wears, in spite of his considerabl

gine him sitting across the table watching the faces of his antagonists with a cold eye, wh

ttle things about men which reveal their purposes

y names and addresses but personal details, the voter's point of view, what interests him, what influences may

he little unconsidered trifles which make men vote this way and that. And he is so objective about it all that he rarely deceives himself. If into this concern with the small motives which mo

fulness is there certainly; card catalogues are above all useful, especially when there is variety and diversity

posterity should be interested in the fleeting and inconsiderable figures who fill the national capital "in this wicked and

mething to play upon. He accepts Senators as they are, sympathetically. What makes them vote this way and that is the major consideration of politics. His record

recently. Nearby sat the Indiana Senator. His neighbor, whom I did not recognize, doubtless some politician fro

portant as showing that Jim is not merely patronizing, descending affectionately from the great heights of the S

is extraordinary intuition about the cards in other hands around the lamp-lit table, the soul of Watson is in the embrace. His voice

sociation, at that time a rather shady organization of lesser business men. If he had not been the

cause you have often heard them on the stump and in the Senate, and read them in country editorials, words that have long lost their precise meaning but evoke the old

Japanese delegation but the second Kato, had enough English to remark it. "Your Preside

He has thunders in his voice, he tosses his head with its fuzzy hair magnificently, he has gusto. He has imagination. He is a big, lovable if not wholly admirable, boy playing at oratory, playing at statesmanship, playing above all at

S FRELINGHUYS

suggest what conditions have given quite ordinary men power and how feeble leadership has become, with the country no longer agreed how bes

aper down to Tim." We have "tapered down to Tim,"-or rather to "Jim"-in the Senate because as a people we have been indifferent and uns

ar election of Senators and upon the choice of candidates at direct primaries. But the decay began before the system changed. We resorted to new

ne vital interest of the country, saw to it that it was effectively represented in Congress. It was then somebody's job to see that at least

onal attention through their control of industry, and small lawyers similarly re

ch seeks social preferment not to be obtained in small home

play the favorite game of dispensing patronage an

traditions leave him the choice between id

t was reported to President Harding's indignation that one of the Chicago banker candidates for the Secretaryship of the Treasury wished to retire into the Cabinet

Nature equipped him with unusual energy and aggressiveness and those two qualities brought success in writing insurance. Nothing in his early training inhibited his robust tem

literature has its place, on all four w

he balances between the two factions as long as possible and elects to go with the more numerous. Simple, likable, honest, safe so long

ign of Clay and Frelinghuysen. He will recite to you campaign songs of those unsuccessful candidates for President and Vice-President.

an ancestor! If an insurance company were a high place from which to survey the world at one's feet! B

scend. Washington is a social melting pot. No one asks whether you are one of the Blanks. You are Senator Blank and that is enough. And if you are so fortunate, by your very averageness, to attach yourself

nd domestic, in the realm of ideas-as when you sit in y

o beyond the limits of the insurance business. You look among the branches of the Frelinghuysen family tree withou

aunts him. Aggressiveness in his case covers it, as it so often does a feeling of weakness. After he has blustered through some utterance, he will butt

s New Jersey colleague as a fascinated bird watches those of a sn

ty with the softer tones which are now everywhere heard. In politics one has to be regular, and New has the impulse to individuality, which with Borah and LaFollette manifests itself in political isolation. With New it manifests itself in hat and speech. New thus remains a person, not merely a clothes-horse which is recorded "aye"

ts against the sharp wits under the water, and your ego is fortified when, the day being dark and your hand being cunning, you land a mes

Suppose shrewdness that asks no more than conversation and a small mess of fish. It is delightful. As we listen to it arriving after the most penetrating exposition at the same conclusions which we have reached directly and stupidly, we ar

t also take himself seriously as a politician. "Jim," says New, "is an orator, a great ora

s. At a dinner in Indiana, New contrived to have his rival for the senatorship, Beveridge, and the politically outlawed Mayor of Indianapolis, Lew Shank, not invited. Watson would have led them both in

, who by doing little favors here and there get themselves elected to the municipal legislature; they see that every constituent gets his street sign and sidewalk encumbrance

essentials of senatorship, the habit of answering all letters that come to him, the practice of introducing by request

ocal press and is paid for his services in publicity. New York is populous and sent many soldiers to the late war. Nevertheless, th

e is unhappy when he has to take sides on sharply debated issues.

RRY S. NEW

s neither words nor manner. His colleagues look down on him a little. But most of them are after all only

about with every breeze of politics. He is so unsure that his nerves are always on edge, in danger of breaking. When he was balancing political consequences over nicely during the League of Nations discussion, Ex-President Taft said to him impatiently: "The troub

which is supposed to be in the man who rises in the world, all that which comes from an established position. Unlike most great lawyers who retire into the Senate, Mr. Kellogg does not merely interest himself in constitutional questions, like a child with molasses on its fingers playing with feathers. He is industrious. He interests himself in the Senate's

of thing that is not done is the kind of thing that is not done. You don't do it and make no parade of your abstinence. Wadsworth does not open his home to all his New York colleagues in both houses just because it is politically expedient. His house is his own, and so is his conscience, which is not surrendered at the demands of woman suffrage or of the dries. He has courage. He has convictions. He is lonely. To be othe

S W. WADSWOR

political world about him, its wastefulness, its consumption of white paper, on leaves to print and on reports which no one reads. He is the aggrieved parent. "My children," he seems always to say, "you must mend your ways." He specializes in misplaced commas. Nothing is too trivial for his all seeing eyes. In committee he talks much, twice as much as anyone else, about points which escape the attention of all his colleagues. Senators, wishing to get through no

eeks social preferment or the destruction of a title in Washington, such as Calder and Frelinghuysen, the politician who likes to play the game better in the Capitol than at home, like New, the arist

IAM M. CALDE

voiding the alienation of its loosely held supporters. The party program is something on which all kinds of people can stand. Necessarily

e which will come with the shift of power and responsibility to the legislative branch can be built. The most brilliant and interesting of them is Sena

orah is that opposition. His is the intelligence which inspires the Democratic party when it consents to be inspired by intelligence. He believes that the revolution has come, not one of street fighting and bomb throwing but a peaceful change which has made the old parties mean

ns calm when his name is mentioned, perhaps because Borah never gets into a passion himself and never addresses himself to popular prejudice. He is not a mob orator. He is impersonal in his appeals. No one any longer suspects him of

agine one of them, beyond the average of intelligence, freed from ambition t

ton; why should he exchange the immunity he possesses for a small group of followers? Besides he believes in the power of oratory rather than in the power of or

from any illusions about himself with respect to the Presidency. The habit of carrying a comb in his vest pocket marks him as free from the social ambitions which numb

f Washington, that he thought more of men than of principles and especially of one man, Johnson. The test of his sincerity

ad an opportunity to speak and act against a brazen even though foolish attempt to buy a no

asal voice from the press remarked, "Senator, there will be great public sympathy with you as a victim of the railroads. But the people will only know how

in the national campaign of 1920. The delegates were in control of Newberry's political friends. They remained firm for Johnson throughout

the stage and introduce them to the delegates. The natural order was Roosevelt first, since he was the nominee for President and since he was, moreover, one of the most distinguished figures in the world, and Johnson, since he had

ve convention he was more important than Roosevelt. In the Newberry c

ce is shot red with passion. His voice is angry. He is a defeated idealist left in this barren generation without an ideal. He might have been led away by the war as so many were, as Wilson was, into the belief that out of its sufferings would come a purified

ient he uses all the arts, disingenuous presentations, appeals to prejudice, not because he is indifferent to justice but because

he benefactor of the race! Not while Jim Reed has breath in his body! Here is an American idol, tear it down, exhibit its clay feet! Shall Wilson "get away w

est thing to a great satirist this country has developed. And the amazing consideration is that

indicate our real perception of the truth by telling how small they are. Politics is suspect and it stamps you as a person of penetration to show that you are aware what sham and dishonesty there is in them. It is almost as good an evidence of a superior mind

eal of a sham, in the hands of amusing charlatans. We tolerate him in perhaps the only

outed. And the friends of the pact sat silent afraid of Reed's power as a debater, until Senator Lenroot having studied the document several minutes in the cloakroom read the plain langu

disrespect did not amount to lése majesté. The wisdom of the "fool" was regarded with a certain awe and admiration. But the death rate among those who sought this franchise must have been high. It must be personality wh

tte is perhaps too serious about it. If he could have said what he had to say with a laugh and so as to raise a laugh he might have been privileged like Reed, or, if he had to be serious, he should have been serious like Borah, in a detached and impersonal fas

nd presence to which men unconsciously resort; some of it is an exterior which has been cultivated to cover up an unusually shy and sensitive heart. The character in history and fiction which most intrigues him is Hamlet, that gentle soul unfit for life.

You can not safely be too uncompromising, too serious. It makes no difference if you were right in rejecting both wings of the party as reactionary which they speedily proved to be. It makes no difference if you were right in opposing the war, and no one is so sure t

alth. It sets him apart from most men, who do not let sickness in the family interfere with their business and perform their full duty when they hire a trained nurse. People think of LaF

ogued; the general mind is made up. The farm bloc no more turned t

Kenyon referred to it when he said Newberry on trial for fitness for his seat "floated back into the Senate on an ocean of tea." An

not impossible wife, and you belong to the Senatorial middle class, the new rich insurance agents, lawyers, miners, and manufacturers who control the fate of the socially ambitious. You may not be invi

d out seldom or not at all. You have to organize a little set of i

t his honesty and independence would be overlooked. But he was never accepted by the "booboisie." He was virtually cold shouldered ou

destroy it." If he said this he really flattered the "booboisie." Destruction is reserved for wicked things like Sodom and Gomorrah. But the Senate is not wicked. It is good, honest in the sense of not stealing, well-