Reaction

On the ceremonial day, when Vice President Dawes had made his inaugural address, sworn in the new Senators en masse, he announced with a gesture, shooing the audience out of the Chamber:

“The Sergeant-at-Arms will carry out the order of the Senate for the inauguration of the President of the United States on the east front of the Capitol.”

As the gallery and the floor cleared, a number of amazed Senators remained on the floor foregoing the pleasure of the ceremonies out-of-doors. They remarked what they thought of the Vice President’s speech in voices loud enough to reach the galleries. They were not exactly excited, not exactly indignant, but certainly displeased. The Senators were no better pleased when they assembled about an hour later and found no presiding officer present. Finally, Senator Watson took the chair and it was agreed to meet again on the following noon.

Outside the chamber, the Senators began to air their opinions of Mr. Dawes’ speech to the press.

Senator Morris (Progressive Republican): “I have an opinion and a strong one, but I do not care to express it.”

Senator Ashurst (Democrat): “It was the most acrobatic, gymnastic speech I have ever heard in the Senate.”

Senator McKellar (Democrat): “A deplorable performance. I am sorry.”

Senator Robinson (Democratic Floor Leader) : “The ceremonies are necessarily formal. It is regrettable that they were made ridiculous.”

Senator Caraway (Democrat): “He disclosed that he was almost as lacking in a knowledge of the rules of the Senate and Constitution of the United States as he was lacking in good taste—almost but not quite.”

Senator George (Democrat): “There are some features of the rules, no doubt, that should be changed; but he defeated any change by the brutal and clownish way in which he went about it.”

Senator Ferris (Democrat): “T think the Vice President has the lesson of his life coming to him. . . . The rules of the Senate are hopeless; improvement will have to be deferred to the next world.”

Senator Reed (Democrat): “His melody of voice, grace of gesture and majesty of presence were only excelled by his modesty.”

Senator Edwards (Democrat): “Hell and Maria—and not much Maria.”

Senator Bruce (Democrat): “I shall have to see a little more of Vice President Dawes before I express an opinion as to whether he has the skill and address to induce the Senate to break with its past. The only statement that I can hazard about him at this time is that he evidently is a ‘character.’ ”

Senator Smoot (Republican): “It would have been better if he had made it some other place than the Senate.”

Senator Willis (Republican): “With regard to Vice President Dawes’ speech, I want to say that I am on my way to the barbershop for a haircut and a shave.” ”

Senator Oddie (Republican): “It was a virile speech and shows that he is full of fight-something that the Senate needs.”

Senator Goff (Republican): think it was a constructive speech full of common sense.”

By next day, the heat of the Senate had radiated away in good part. Senator Hale explained that he had sent the Vice President to the White House and not allowed him to return to the Senate after the President’s inauguration. A few mild rebukes for the haste of the previous day’s proceedings were spoken, but nothing was said of the speech.

Strictly speaking, Mr. Dawes’ speech was not a diatribe. A reading of the speech will hardly show anything intemperate. It was less his words than his manner which offended the Senate. His expression, his gestures, his wielding of the gavel disclosed several times more clearly what he thought of the Senate than did his actual phrases. It was his thought rather than his words which gave offense.

The Senate, by and large, is not made up of youngsters. They are older men and older men do not take kindly to criticism. Most of them realize it. For them, anything that detracts from the acknowledged infallibility of the Senate impugns the significance, the success of their whole lives. An attack on the Senate is an attack on their caste. Moreover, most of them have spent their lives in politics and frequently no small part of their lives in legislative chambers. They have had experience in what is effective in legislative procedure, in the practical means of securing political ends. They are aware of their experience and set great store by it. “Is it not impertinence, ignorance,” they said to one another, “that an outsider, a man who is now holding his first elective office, should come to us, tell us our methods are ineffectual, try to dictate to us how to run our own business?”

They thought, as Senator Jim Reed of Missouri was reported to have actually said: “We’ll have to tame him.” The taming process they regarded as easy; the Vice President, as presiding officer, has almost no power. He can only interpret the rules; while, on the floor, Senators can say anything they like about him or to him, confident that they can make him appear a jackass.

The situation from Mr. Dawes’ standpoint is quite otherwise. He has antagonized the Senate, the body with which he will have to get along, somehow, for the next four years. If he did it deliberately, and it seems he did, he must have known that he was not making for his personal comfort.

He is a dramatist and a fighter, and there is no better proof of his talents Ithan his speech, which immediately forced into the national arena the question of efficiency. Apparently he desired at once to assume, in the public eye, the role of antagonist to the Senate.

That move was not without political astuteness. It aligned against him a good many political leaders of both parties, but it was the only way in which he could avoid at once being wrapped in the shroud of Vice Presidential insignificance. Besides, the public has of late manifested no little disgust for the methods of Congress, the Senate in particular. Under present circumstances, it is not unlikely that the Senate will go on during the next four years in the same manner in which it has gone on for the last four years, “dawdling,” in the manner which has left the Isle of Pines Treaty unacted upon for a score of years, the World Court proposal for over two, and Muscle Shoals for something longer. To be sure, Mr. Dawes is disadvantaged by being able to do very little for the next four years except talk against the Senate and at it; but if, four years from now, he has assumed the post of the champion of the people against legislative flummery, then he will have a great political asset.

In a contest with the Senate, he has a pronounced advantage in the public eye, for the public is made up largely of business men whose natural sympathy is with one who drives ahead to get things done, rather than with the deliberate and political type of mind loathe to abandon its measured tread and political shifts.