Precedent & Temperament

Inquiring reporters always buzz around the White House after Cabinet news. Their job is to ask all the questions they can think of in the hope of somehow getting an answer that is really news. In this way, in the course of time, about all possible questions are asked and some of them are answered. In that way it happed that last week a reporter asked: "Will General Dawes, as Vice President, attend Cabinet meetings ?" The answer was: "No; at least, last August, when he dropped in at Plymouth, Vermont, to see the President, he said he didn't care to be present." Here was news, if only a wee bit. Senator Harding, during his campaign in 1920, announced that he would, if elected, invite Governor Coolidge to sit in the Cabinet. Some 7,000.000 votes decided that Vice President Coolidge should do so, and he did. So the precedent was set. Now it seems ready to be broken. Political tongues wag: "Let me see--it was August when General Dawes visited President Coolidge at Plymouth. The campaign was just beginning. They certainly must have been sure of election to begin discussing such details that early. "And why do you suppose General Dawes spoke up and said he didn't want a Cabinet place? Maybe it was politics. They say he is out for the White House in 1928. He may not want to be too close to the Administration in case it should shuffle off into unpopularity. "Yes, and then maybe he wouldn't feel comfortable as an unofficial observer at the Cabinet table. He probably knows he would want to run away with the meeting if he were there--and that never would do with cautious Cal at the helm. Maybe so, maybe so."