PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

that wizardry which popular leaders like Roosevelt, Wilson, or Lloyd
George possess, none of that histrionic gift by which such men
impersonate the feelings of their followers. From that aspect of
politics he was by temperament and by training remote. But yet he knew
by calculation what the politician's technic is. He was one of those
people who know just how to do a thing, but who can not quite do it
themselves. They are often better teachers than the virtuoso to whom
the art is so much second nature that he himself does not know how he
does it. The statement that those who can, do; those who cannot,
teach, is not nearly so much of a reflection on the teacher as it
sounds.
Mr. Hughes knew the occasion was momentous, and he had prepared his
manuscript carefully. In a box sat Theodore Roosevelt just back from
Missouri. All over the house sat the veterans of Armageddon in various
stages of doubt and dismay. On the platform and in the other boxes the
ex-whited sepulchres and ex-second-story men of 1912 were to be seen,
obviously in the best of health and in a melting mood. Out beyond the
hall there were powerful pro-Germans and powerful pro-Allies; a war
party in the East and in the big cities; a peace party in the middle
and far West. There was strong feeling about Mexico. Mr. Hughes had to
form a majority against the Democrats out of people divided into all
sorts of combinations on Taft vs. Roosevelt, pro-Germans vs.
pro-Allies, war vs. neutrality, Mexican intervention vs.
non-intervention.
About the morality or the wisdom of the affair we are, of course, not
concerned here. Our only interest is in the method by which a leader
of heterogeneous opinion goes about the business of securing a
homogeneous vote.
"This _representative_ gathering is a happy augury. It means the
strength of _reunion._ It means that the party of _Lincoln_
is restored...."
The italicized words are binders: _Lincoln_ in such a speech has
of course, no relation to Abraham Lincoln. It is merely a stereotype
by which the piety which surrounds that name can be transferred to the
Republican candidate who now stands in his shoes. Lincoln reminds the
Republicans, Bull Moose and Old Guard, that before the schism they had
a common history. About the schism no one can afford to speak. But it
is there, as yet unhealed.
The speaker must heal it. Now the schism of 1912 had arisen over
domestic questions; the reunion of 1916 was, as Mr. Roosevelt had
declared, to be based on a common indignation against Mr. Wilson's
conduct of international affairs. But international affairs were also
a dangerous source of conflict. It was necessary to find an opening