Woodrow Wilson

Seitenzahl:

126

Gewicht:

195 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V A Pledge To Humanity 1 The policies of an administration are broadly foreshadowed by the "platform" adopted at the nominating convention on which the candidate for the Presidency stands; the candidate's speech of acceptance in reply to the formal notification of the committee appointed to inform him of his nomination; and his first official act as President, the announcement of the members of his Cabinet. A political platform has no legal validity; it has neither the force of statute nor the moral obligation imposed upon an individual by his personal promise. It is the compromise of many conflicting elements, some of them governed by principle and others yielding to expediency, who are relieved from personal responsibility because their identity is lost in the mass. But a political platform is always to be regarded as the expression of benevolent intention, of what the representatives of the people would like to do, and perhaps intend to do if under the heat of emotion their enthusiasm has not carried them too far; and it perhaps more nearly typifies than any other document the belief men have at the moment of the things their fellow men are thinking, their desires and unsatisfied longings; and puts in concrete form so as to make the strongest appeal the crude ideas of the multitude. The Democratic platform of 1912 was in harmony with the new thoughts that were moving men and the aspirations that made them see in a purified politics a regenerative force. The tariff, according to Democratic belief, had been perverted from its original purpose of providing for the necessary support of the government and been made an instrument of oppression and the means of intrenching monopoly, therefore it was natural for the convention to demand that taxes should be suffici...

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Mehr von:  Alfred Maurice Low, Cambridge Scholars Publishing