ly placed in the battle of Armageddon. A
thousand ennuies located him for all political time. No convictions
hold him where he is in case there be profit in changing sides;
other men habitually conservative would have the preference over
him on the other side. In this sense he is accidently radical,
accidently because he happened to emerge in politics at a radical
moment. That takes into account only the mental background of his
political position. There is an element that was not chance. Public
passion is almost invariably radical, springing as it does from the
resentment of inequality, and Johnson is the tongue of public
passion.

Is he dangerous? He is, only if public passion becomes dangerous
and only up to the point where the speakers of revolution pass from
the stage and the doers of it rig up their chopping blocks. At
present he furnishes the words, the ugly words, which men throw
instead of stones at the objects of their hate. He is the safety
valve of gathering passion. Men listen to him and feel that they
have done something to vindicate their rights. They applaud him to
shake the roof, and vote for Mr. Harding.

It is customary to speak of his magnetism over crowds. He has no
magnetism in personal contact. He walks toward you as if he were
about to deliver a blow, an impression that is strengthened by his
square menacing figure. His voice is unpleasant. His smile is wry.
He not unusually has a complaint to make against the public,
against the press, against fate, against you personally. He is not
interested in people, as Roosevelt was to so an amazing degree, and
as magnetic persons usually are. He is cold, hard, and selfish. His
quarrels are numerous, with the campaign managers of the Armageddon
fight, with his own campaign manager of 1920, with the newspaper
correspondents. He is habitually pessimistic, and pessimism and
magnetism do not go together.

His complaint that the people were docile and would not recover
their confidence and self-assertion in his time, was a bit of his
inevitable gloom. His dark habit of thought hung over his campaign
for the presidential nomination of 1920, preventing his making a
real effort in many states, and lay in the way of his success. He
has few friends, love having been left out of his make-up. I do not
speak of family affection--but love in its larger implications.
Those who surround him--clerks and secretaries--have the air of
repressed, starving personalities.