OCR Text |
Show OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. I A year from now the country will be in the throes of our quadrennial presidential campaign. The candidates will be before the people, and the people will make their choice. It is as near certain cer-tain as certainty of any future event can be that the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican. Repub-lican. In the light of past events and the present temper of the people it would require a very wild r flight, we might almost say an insane flight, of the imagination to conceive any other result of the campaign to be fought next year. Any other conception of the result is insupportable from the evidence. This being so, it is the duty of the cit-t cit-t izenship of the country to see that the candidates of -these two parties measure up to the require-; require-; ments of the office to which they aspire. There j have been quite a number of names suggested by both parties as likely candidates, most of whom J have very honorable careers as public servants, but I sump of whom by their works are not in any way I entitled to the highest office in the world. I For six years the country has been enjoylug an I administration of the presidential office the like of I which was never before known. Mr. Roosevelt i- brought to the office an academic training and a large practical experience supplemented by a vigorous vig-orous mental and physical constitution which keeps tilings going, lie probably has made some mistakes, mis-takes, but they were not of idleness. And his mistakes mis-takes haven't changed his convictions nor destroyed his courage of them. His very activity, indeed, has spoiled the job of president for anybody not as strong or as strenuous as himself; has robbed the office of any form of sinecure or reward for services serv-ices already rendered. When President Roosevelt steps out of the White House he will bequeath to V,.? successor such a formidable job that no mollycoddle molly-coddle will be able to hold it satisfactorily to the . people. And it is up to the people to see that no , mollycoddle is named on either the Republican or Democratic tickets next summer, for one of these parties is sure to elect its candidate. The presidential office is one wherein the work is n?vor done. In years gone by it may have been a high post of honor to men who served their countrv well in other fields, but from the Roosevelt administration, admin-istration, henceforth, the people are going to de- i'1-i.d a strenuous administration, vigorous and alive, and what is more, they are going to get it if tiny can. The country is going fast. The people like the pace, and they want the chief magistrate to be a pacemaker. None but a hard worker need -apply for the job. |