III
THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPERAMENT
If I were writing a book for the next President to run for President on—a thing I have guilty moments of hoping I am doing—the first thing I would arrange for in the book, would be to put down in it two platforms for him to run on—one platform on what he believes and the other platform—the way he believes it and gets other people to believe it.
The way the next President we pick out, does his believing, the way he keeps from believing weakly what he wants to, and from being fooled about his party and about himself, the clean-cutness and honesty of his mind, the tone, the ring in which he believes in himself and gets other people to believe in him, is going to be, from the point of view of his getting for this country at home and abroad, what it wants, the most important thing about him.
The most important part of the next President's platform is going to be, in the eyes of the people, his character, his temperament, the way his personal traits and habits dramatize what he says, the way he lives what he believes.
The American people may not be shrewd about seers, or about historians or philosophers, but they are very likely any minute to be deep about people. When Henry Cabot Lodge draws a rough sketch in chalk of history he wants a hundred million people to help him make, and when he is being fooled about it and is all out of perspective the people may defer to him, may feel Mr. Lodge is too deep for them, but the moment they see Mr. Lodge being fooled about himself, they find Mr. Lodge easy.
In a trait in human nature like this, with which they are familiar every day, a hundred million people—without trying, are deep.
If a hundred million people could sit down and write a book—a book or open letter addressed in the next two months to those two big vague, whoofy Nobodies we call our Political Parties, and tell them in so many words the kind of President the people want and understand—the kind of President the people would sweep in unspeakably into the White House when they saw him, no matter what any politician said, I am inclined to believe it would be found—when the book by the hundred million people was out, that our people feel on the whole that we could not have anything better in our country for our next President than a man who would be a lawyer backwards.
What the platform of personality we want our next President to have amounts to, is this—Know everything a lawyer knows. Have everything a lawyer has—and just turn it around and use it the other way and be another kind of man about it.
The fate of America and the fate of the world may be said to be turning to-day on the degree during the next four years, during the next President's administration, the American people and all groups of the people, stop believing weakly what they want to believe and face the facts about themselves.