The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday acknowledgment of the presence of the people is News.
The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is intensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured familiarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting to be forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, "Here we are! What are you believing this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act as if you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are the men you say are like us? What are they like this morning?
"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do you think you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what you thought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decide this morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President—if you please—who are you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name, who are we?"
This is always the gist of what it says, "Who are we?"
It is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who they are, wondering if he can interpret them.
Then he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks.
Rows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each a few minutes with his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say, "This is the People."
He listens.
It is very hard to be always President of the People when one is listening and the little-great go by.
One has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quite alone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for, he remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary, half glad, standing there by day by night, saying, "Who are we?" One would think it would be hard to be glib with the Child.