"Oh, I'm sure you'll succeed," he told me brightly. "After all, Mr. Carboy, we've heard of your ... ah ... group. Oh, yes. Your fame is ... ah ... universal."
"Sure," I said. "I'll do my best. But the less I'm seen talking to you, the better."
"Nevertheless," he said. "If we need to meet—"
"If we do," I said, "there's a set of signals in the daily papers. Your Intelligence should know all about that, Mr. President."
"Ah," he said. "Of course. Certainly. Well, Mr. Carboy, I do want to tell you how glad I am—"
"So am I," I said. "Good-by."
The trouble with the democratic process is that a group of people picked at random can elect some silly leaders. That's been happening ever since ancient Greece, I imagine, and it'll go on happening. It may not be fatal, but it's annoying.
My job, for instance, was to prop up this foolish little man. I had to work against a group of guerrillas who were even more democratic, from all I'd heard, and who seemed to have a great deal of common, ordinary brains. Of course, I wasn't doing it for the President—it was for the Comity as a whole, and it needed to be done.
But I can't honestly say that that made me feel any better about the job.