The Ghost in the White House / Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

by Gerald Stanley Lee

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BOOK VI

WHAT THE PEOPLE EXPECT OF THE PRESIDENT

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I

THE BIG BROTHER OF THE PEOPLE

If I were writing a book to be used during a Presidential campaign, used as a handbook of the beliefs of the people—a book in the next few weeks for a nation to say yes or no to, for a great people to go before their conventions with, the first belief I would put down for the new President to run on would be the belief that every man in this country is a bigger, better and truer man than the present arrangements of our industrial and social life seem willing to let him express.

We are all practically waiting in crowds to-day, all over this country—in held-in and held-back crowds, to act better than we look.

This belief is the first belief—the first practical working belief the next President of this country should have about the people.

Putting this belief forward as a hardheaded every-day working belief about human nature in America, is going to be the way to get a President for our next President who shall release the spirit of the nation, and reveal to a world not only in promise but in action that the people of America are as great a people, as true, level-eyed and steady-hearted a people as the spent and weary peoples of Europe have hoped we were.