Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 220, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1912 — “PLAYING THE GAME.” [ARTICLE]

“PLAYING THE GAME.”

Truly, President Taft Does Not Follow System Politically. That is a criticism often heard oi President Taft. It is the professional politician usually who voices it, but often it is repeated by those who are accustomed to take their estimates of public men and their political opinions from others. Playing the game has been the occupation of time serving politicians from time Immemorial. Men who regard politics as a game like to see it played deftly. Other men without fixed ideas on the subject parrot the criticism passed by the experts. Playing the game in politics necessarily has deceit as its fundamental principle. The public man who sees developing an issue that might prove embarrassing to him personally, and who manages, by guile, to divert public attention to another, a lesser, but a perfectly safe, issue, plays the game. The public man who makes public protestations of his enmity toward swollen wealth and then holds secret conferences with the representatives of that wealth, plays the game. The public man who preaches one code of political morality and practices another plays the game. The public man who utters sounding bitt empty phrases, no matter how delightful his diction or how superb his eloquence, plays the game. The public man who makes promises impossible of fulfillment plays the game. The public man who puts the acquirement of public favor above ideals, of public service plays the game. Truly, President Taft does not know how to play the game. He has been reared in an atmosphere of service rather than politics, as we have-come to know politics. The thing that has always concerned him is the doing of an the spec-, tacular staging of it, nor the exploitation of it, nor, on the contrary, the concealment of it. To serve has always been his ideal, not merely to acquire the appearance of serving. It has been impossible for him to look upon public service as a game. The public’s business, as he regards it, is serious business. There is reason for the belief that the American people as a whole share with him this view. The growing Intelligence of the nation is rejecting the idea that the selection of their public servants is merely a sporting proposition. «