rather more than the average man's political skill and the average
man's industry or lack of industry. His mentality is not lacking;
it is undisciplined, especially in its higher ranges, by hard
effort. There is a certain softness about him mentally. It is not
an accident that his favorite companions are the least intellectual
members of that house of average intelligence, the Senate. They
remind him of the mental surroundings of Marion, the pleasant but
unstimulating mental atmosphere of the Marion Club, with its
successful small town business men, its local storekeepers, its
banker whose mental horizon is bounded by Marion County, the value
of whose farm lands for mortgages he knows to a penny, the lumber
dealer whose eye rests on the forests of Kentucky and West
Virginia.

The President has never felt the sharpening of competition. He was
a local pundit because he was the editor. He was the editor because
he owned the Republican paper of Marion. There was no effective
rival. No strong intelligence challenged his and made him fight for
his place. He never studied hard or thought deeply on public
questions. A man who stays where he is put by birth tends to accept
authority, and authority is strong in small places. The acceptance
of authority implies few risks. It is like staying in Marion
instead of going to New York or even Cleveland. It is easier, and
often more profitable than studying hard or thinking deeply or
inquiring too much.

And Mr. Harding's is a mind that bows to authority. What his party
says is enough for Mr. Harding. His party is for protection and Mr.
Harding is for protection; the arguments for protection may be
readily assimilated from the editorials of one good big city