We must not forget, however, that in separating any of these factors from the rest, we deal at once with highly artificial abstractions, so that this description will have continually to neglect many facts and cut the threads that cross its path. The history of the American Presidency shows at all times its close connection with other institutions. A treaty or even a nomination by the President requires the ratification of the Senate before it is valid; and on the other side, the President can veto any bill of Congress. Even the Supreme Court and the President can hardly be considered apart, as was seen, for instance, in the time of Cleveland, when his fiscal policy took final shape in an income tax which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional, and therefore unlawful; or again when the colonial policy of McKinley was upheld and validated by a decision of the same court. Again, the party politics of state and town are no less intimately related to the federal government and the Presidency. Here, too, the leadings are in both directions; local politics condition the national, and these in turn dominate the local. Cleveland was a man who had never played a part in national politics until he became the executive head of the nation. As Mayor of Buffalo he had been so conspicuous throughout the State of New York as to be elected Governor of that state, and then in the state politics so won the confidence of his party as to be nominated and elected to the highest national office. McKinley, on the other hand, although he, too, had been the Governor of a state, nevertheless gained the confidence of his party during his long term of service in Congress.
Similarly it may be said that local politics are the natural path which leads to any national position, whether that of senator or representative. And inversely the great federal problems play an often decisive rôle in the politics of the states with which they strictly have no connection. Federal party lines divide legislatures from the largest to the smallest, and even figure in the municipal elections. Unreasonable as it may seem, it is a fact that the great national questions, such as expansion, free trade, and the gold standard, divide the voters of a small village into opposing groups when they have to elect merely some one to the police or street-cleaning department. It is, therefore, never a question of a mechanical co-ordination and independence of parts, but of an organic interdependence, and every least district of the Union is thoroughly _en rapport_ with the central government and doings of the national parties.