So far as it continues to be influential it
destroys one necessary condition of responsible and efficient
government, and it is bound to paralyze any attempt to make the national
organization adequate to the promotion of the national interest. Mr.
Roosevelt has exhibited his genuinely national spirit in nothing so
clearly as in his endeavor to give to men of special ability, training,
and eminence a better opportunity to serve the public. He has not only
appointed such men to office, but he has tried to supply them with an
administrative machinery which would enable them to use their abilities
to the best public advantage; and he has thereby shown a faith in human
nature far more edifying and far more genuinely democratic than that of
Jefferson or Jackson.
Mr. Roosevelt, however, has still another title to distinction among the
brethren of reform. He has not only nationalized the movement, and
pointed it in the direction of a better conception of democracy, but he
has rallied to its hammer the ostensible, if not the very enthusiastic,
support of the Republican party.
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