The first victory either side will be allowed by the people, is its victory over itself.
People in this country who are not fooled by themselves, who are capable of self-criticism, self-confession and self-discipline, can have anything they want.
XIII
FOOLING ONESELF IN POLITICS
The same thing that everybody can see is going to happen in business in this country from now on—the pushing forward—the victory over all others in business of the men who are not fooled about themselves is going to be seen happening ten times over in politics.
The leading symptom of the mood of the people, the magnificent blanket political secret that covers all the other secrets of the coming conventions and elections, the dominating fact of the next man's next four years in The White House, is the thing that is going to be done by the people from to-day on, to politicians who are fooled about themselves.
One has but to mention one or two and a nation sees it.
Any little natural impression my fellow citizens may have had at the beginning of this article that in putting forward my idea of being a lawyer backwards, or the idea that we must all practice at being lawyers backwards to ourselves, I am putting forward just a gay pleasant thoughtlet, instead of a grave and pressing national issue, an issue on which the fate of a people is at stake, fades away when one really begins to think of how the idea would really work out if tried on particular politicians.
Everybody can pick out his own of course, but I am inclined to believe just at the moment, that if there was a good man everybody in this nation knew of who was being a lawyer backwards—say in New York or London—a man who had a big practice and who had a fine record in bracing men up to fight themselves and not to be fooled about themselves, the man that most people in this country would like to take up a national collection for, have sent to him and done over at once, no matter what it cost, would be Henry Cabot Lodge.