GENERAL DAWES AND THE SENATE
BY FRANK R. KENT (The Baltimore Sun).
TH"tlate Theodore Roosevelt once said that the way r an unpopular President to become popular was to get into a row with the United States Senate. The theory was that there is among the American people an inherent, deep-rooted and traditional prejudice against the Senate. Undoubtedly, there is a curiously strong feeling among many people that something happens inside of a man as soon as he gets to the Senate that changes him—makes him sour, mean, obstinate, arbitrary and unreasonable. Although it is true that the Senate itself has contributed no little to this feeling, and that no small part of the prejudice is justified by the facts, yet there is no real warrant for the sort of sweeping condemna- tion heard on all sides. It has become an American habit to " cuss " Congress, and particularly the Senate. It has reached a point where unquestionably a certain amount of injustice is done to the Senate collectively, as well as to Senators individually.
However, the prejudice does widely prevail, and General Charles G. Dawes (elected Vice-President and presiding officer of the Senate last fall) has launched a campaign against that body which seems in a fair way to prove that Mr. Roosevelt was right. For in Washington and elsewhere among politicians there is a quite common belief. that General Dawes has his eagle eye upon the Pre- sidential nomination of his party in 1928, and that what he is really doing now is spade work in preparation. Upon no other hypothesis can they explain his course.
The case of Mr. Dawes is an interesting one. That, after what happened to him in Washington, he should be able immediately to plan a speech-making tour of the country without being laughed off the stump, seems to prove two things—first, that the popular prejudice against the Senate is stronger than ever before ; second, that the great bulk of the American people are too busy making a living to get a clear picture of what happens at their seat of government. For, if the truth be told, Mr. Dawes cut anything but an heroic figure in the ten days between his inauguration. as Vice-President and the adjournment of Congress, last: March, On the very day he was sworn in, he smashed all precedents and stunned his audience by making a violent attack upon the Senate the second after he had taken the oath. He screeched at the Senators, banged his fist onl the table, wildly waved his arms about his head, hauled the Senate over the coals for its delay and its antiquated' rules, and altogether completely upset the dignity of the' occasion and switched the spot light from Mr. Coolidge to himself.
Now, regardless of the merits of Mr. Dawes' criticism' of the Senate rules, there was but one opinion as to the bad taste, bad manners and bad judgment of his assault.' He overdid the whole business. His voice was too loud,' his gestures too unrestrained and acrobatic, his language too lurid. It was an undignified and somewhat clownish spectacle which made a bad impression upon those whd saw and heard, but not upon those who read. Mr. Dawes followed his lecture to the Senate on how to attend to its business by, one week later, signally failing to attend to his own at perhaps the most critical moment Congress has known since Mr. Wilson left the White House.
The fight was over the Senate's confirmation of Mr. Coolidge's nominee for Attorney-General—Charles B.' Warren. It was a bitter battle with much at stake and had been waged for weeks. When this vote came the ballot was so even that no one could foresee the outcome.' Just before the ballot the calculations of the Administra- tion forces showed that without the Vice-President, who is only permitted to vote in case of a tie, Mr. Warren would be rejected. It was then discovered that they valiant Dawes, who had so fiercely lectured the Senate about sticking to its job, was himself off his own job, and had put someone else in to preside. Inquiry revealed! the fact that in the middle of the afternoon the General had gone to his hotel to take a nap, and was sound asleep while the battle was raging. The efforts to get him up finally resulted in his arrival in a taxi-cab at the Capitol three minutes late. The vote was over ; Warren was rejected ; the President had been given a humiliating defeat and the Administration a rebuke—all by the margin of a single vote. All that Mr. Dawes could have prevented had he been on his own job. His failure is the more striking when it is considered that only about one Vice-President in five ever gets a chance to vote at all, so rare are the ties in the Senate.
Of course a good many people laughed and a good many, cursed, but the curious thing is that the great guffaw which you would naturally expect from the country did not go up. The newspapers made a little fun of the General for a day or so, but most of them being Repub-' lican, the story of his absurd flop was not ruthlessly or, roughly told, and the people as a whole never did get the big laugh over the thing to which they were entitled.' Ordinarily one would think that this sort of mishap would; be sufficient to laugh away almost any man's Presidential; aspirations, if he had them. Probably it would have( ruined General Dawes politically had not he inauguratect his coming to Washington by picking a violent quarrel', with the Senate. To that there was certainly a most! favourable response from the people, as a whole, who did not see or hear him. It is the prejudice against the Senate' that has saved him. For a while the General was; genuinely scared. He thought, and he had a right to think, he had spilled all his political beans. But in a week or so it appeared that, whatever the opinion of him in. Washington, the people as a whole still held him as a hero and the popular conviction was that in some way or other, there had been " dirty work at the cross roads," in the matter of that tie vote—that what had really happened was that the Senate, in revenge for what Dawes had said about it, had deliberately got him out of the way in order to slip over the vote, and that he was not asleep at all. Amazing as it seems, there is a widespread feeling that something like that happened, and there is not the least disposition, except in political circles, to blame Dawes for the Presidential defeat. What the people remember about General Dawes' performance at Washington is that " By golly, he told those fellows down there in the Senate to their faces where to head in!" and there is no doubt that that made an enormous hit in the country.
As soon as the realization came that his failure to vote Lad not hurt him in the country, General Dawes re- bounded like a rubber ball. At once he arranged a schedule of dates for speeches in various parts of the country, and this summer and fall will continue to " lambast " the Senate to the cheers of the populace.
And the poor old kicked and cuffed Senate, holding on to its dignity with both hands—how it does hate him !
Previous page
