What is inside?
An American who governs by being news, himself.
The first thing that the people demand from our President now is that he shall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know first during the next four years—have put into the White House to know first is Woodrow Wilson.
"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?" the steeples and smoking chimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the little country schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fields all say, "Who Are You?"
Then the people listen. They listen to his "I wills" and "I won'ts" for news about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steers into the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in the editorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on the National Wire—in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up their long, patient, hopeful answer to their question, "Who Are You, Woodrow Wilson?"
CHAPTER VII
THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"
But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs second by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are news to people, too.
One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of division between good and bad instead of being between one man and another, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down through the middle of each of us.