Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1912 — PRESIDENT AND THE VETO [ARTICLE]

PRESIDENT AND THE VETO

Taft's Wholly Unnecessary Defense of the Function Which He Has So Misused. Mr. Taft at Columbus, 0., undertook to convince an audience that the veto is a good thing. As if it had ever been questioned! The president at times seemß afflicted with literal myopia. * Mr. Taft has vetoed every measure calculated to bring relief to the people from excessive living costs. The wool bill, the cotton and steel bills, the meat bill, the farmers’ free list bill, all were killed by Taft’s veto. He has perpetuated the plundering of the people. And his defense is an academic discussion of a presidential function constitutionally bestowed. To be sure, those bills came from a Democratic house. But it was to that same Democratic house Mr. Taft’s reciprocity measure was committed. The Democratic house might, in effect, have vetoed the president’s bill. But It didn’t. It thought that the bill would serve the people’s welfare. The Democratic house forgot politics and undertook the public service. The president didn’t. President Taft might have vetoed well. Had he vetoed the Payne-Ald-rich tariff bill he would have been a maker of history. Great opportunity has been his. The qualities of head and heart that make for greatness are not bis. He has vetoed his own succession.

McHarg Now Among the "Bosses.” Ormsby McHarg, one pf the managers of the late Roosevelt campaign, has announced that he will support Mr. Taft. He says: “I supported Colonel Roosevelt as a Republican, having no notion at that time that be was anything else. I was bitterly disappointed to find later what his real Intentions were. I am under no obligations to him or anybody else, however, to get out of the Republican party, and do not intend to do so. . . I believe there is absolutely no future for the new third party beyond Colonel Roosevelt. If the new party expects to live it have to take out a life insurance policy on the colonel’s life. Their cry of “fighting the bosses’’ is already being dissipated, by the winds of public opinion. I do not think that Penrose Is a bit more dangerous than Flinn, and some of the other so-called Republican bosses have quite as good a standing Wfth the voters as has Mr. Perkins.”

Of course, McHarg has, by his action, ranked himself with the bosses. For we know that a boss is a man who opposes Roosevelt. Woodruff was a boss till he came into the camp of the third termer, and so was Flinn. But they have gone through a process of sanctification. It is precisely so with McHarg. He was not a boss when he was doing for Roosevelt the work of a boss. But having broken relations with “the only perfect man” he necessarily sinks to the boss level. We, therefore, fully expect to hear him denounced as an exponent of “crooked politics.” Even Penrose was “all right" when he was running Roosevelt's campaign in Pennsylvania.