Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at WashingtonGilbert, Clinton W. (Clinton Wallace)
History
Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington
Gilbert, Clinton W. (Clinton Wallace)
Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel), 1865-1923; United States -- Politics and government -- 1921-1923
Not every senator has escaped so nearly from the failures which attend
success as has Frelinghuysen. Nor is his escape complete. A sense of
unreality haunts 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 buttonhole you and ask, "Did I make a damn fool of
myself? Now, the point I was trying to make was, etc. Did I get it
clear? Or did I seem like a damn fool?"
Less agile minded than Senator Edge, he watches the motions of his New
Jersey colleague as a fascinated bird watches those of a snake or a cat.
Intellectually he is not at ease, even in the Senate.
Another of the Harding set is Harry New of Indiana, one of the "Wa'al
naow" school of statesmen, in dress and speech the perfect county
chairman of the stage. The broad-brimmed black felt hat, winter and
summer, has withstood all the insidious attacks of fashion. The nasal
voice has equally resisted all the temptations to conformity 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" when Mr. Lodge votes
"aye" and "no" when Mr. Lodge votes "no." But this is hardly fair. Mr.
New has been irregular in other ways. He has not made money; he has lost
it, a fortune in a stone quarry. He is indifferent to it. This marks him
as a person. He would rather whip a stream for trout than go after
dollars with a landing net.
Whipping a stream for trout is the clue to Harry New. If you are a
fisherman you impute all sorts of wiles to the fish. You match your wits
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 mess from the
stream. The world is a trout stream to New. The hat and the nasal accent
are the good old flies that Isaak Walton recommended.
There is the type of mind which sees craft where others see simplicity.
We associate shrewdness with the kind of hat New wears and the kind of
voice he has preserved against the seductions of politeness. It is one
of our rural traditions. 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 are
flattered. We realize that we, too, are shrewd, unconsciously so, as,
wasn't it Moliere's bourgeois gentleman, who learned that he was
unconsciously a gentleman, since he had been doing all his life some of
the things that gentlemen did?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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