THE PRESIDENCY: Half Way

On March 4 President Harding completed the first two years of his Administration, which was the signal for many dignified and somewhat rhetorical eulogies from his friends and a few bitter denunciations from his political enemies.

In arguing the case for and against Harding, both sides had recourse to the record of his achievements and failures instead of to the personality of the man and the theoretical conception of the Chief Executive. Here Harding's enemies were bound to have the best of it in point of fact and prediction, for it is always easier to fix the responsibility for failure upon a President than to prove him to be the author and main spring of great works and noble aspirations.

When Mr. Simeon Fess, ex-Chairman of the Republican Congressional Committee, attempts to portray the President as a lawgiver and executive of the blood and stature of Lincoln, public opinion is at once skeptical and on the defense. When, on the other hand, The New York World, or Mr. Joseph T. Robinson, minority leader in the Senate, impale him upon a phrase like "the creature of a Senatorial oligarchy," or call him the " synthetic automaton of a few reactionary political doctors who met secretly in a room in the Blackstone Hotel in 1920," public prejudice and the mob's love of sensational and derogatory slander is kindled into a livid and cynical flame.

But Harding should not be pleaded for nor abused on the precarious ground of his achievements. He is not a superman like Roosevelt or Wilson; he never pretended to be, and he should not be judged according to such lofty standards. He is important and successful as the embodiment of the American idea of humility exalted by homely virtues into the highest eminence. He is the actuality of the schoolboy notion that anybody has a chance to be President.

Mr. Harding has no personal enemies. Almost everybody in Washington likes him and admits he is a "good fellow." And to be a "good fellow," handshaker and amiable "regular guy" and still occupy the President's chair is, in the national mind, the realization of the highest American idealism. No one realizes this more completely and shrewdly than Harding. Let the " best minds " advise him; let the Marionettes be treated as real neighbors when they come to Washington; let the regimentation of American opinion on sound economics, good citizenship and patriotism receive his full approval in the most hearty and homely fashion—it all redounds to the vitality of the legend he is busily fashioning, that of a man who will not let high office and vast honors go to his head.