ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a puzzle that explains the evolution of a distinguished man into an undistinguished candidate. As a candidate Mr. Hughes has been the perfect representative of a convention that spent a whole morning enjoying speeches by Joe Cannon and Chauncey Depew. From Mr. Hughes's campaign one would hardly know that a great war was opening a period in human history if it were not for repeated references to the fact that Europe is going to be so efficient that the tender business men must be protected against competition. The very quality which has made Mr. Hughes a marked man in American politics is at war with Mr. Hughes's theory about what politics ought to be. He is not a party man, but he believes passionately if abstractly in two parties. The paradox is that he cannot practise the administrative efficiency he preaches without disrupting the organization he left the bench to unite.
