The Ghost in the White House | Page 2

236
BOOK V
THE TECHNIQUE OF A NATION'S BEING BORN AGAIN
I Reconstruction 243 II National Biology 245 III The Air Line League
247 IV The Look-Up Club Looks Up 250 (1) For Instance 250 (2) Why
The Look-Up Club Looks Up 255 V The Try-Out Club Tries Out 257
(1) I + You = We 257 (2) The Engineer at Work 260 (3) The Engineer
and the Game 262 (4) The American Business Sport 264 VI The
Put-Through Clan Puts Through 270 (1) What 270 (2) How 272 (3)
Psycho-Analysis 273 (4) Psycho-Analysis for a Town 276 (5)
To-Morrow 280 (6) Who 281 (7) The Town Fireplace 286 (8) The Sign
on the World 288

BOOK VI
WHAT THE PEOPLE EXPECT OF THE PRESIDENT
I The Big Brother of the People 293 II The Man Who Carries the
Bunch of Keys for the Nation 300 III The President's Temperament 302
IV The President's Religion 306 V The Red Flag and the White House
309

INTRODUCTION
THE MOTION BEFORE THE HOUSE
This is a book a hundred million people would write if they had time.
I am nominating in this book--in the presence of the people, the next
President of the United States.
The name is left blank.
I am nominating a man not a name.
I am presenting a program and a sketch of what the next President will
be like, of what he will be like as a fellow human being, and I leave the
details--his name, the color of his eyes and the party he belongs to, to
be filled in by people later.
Here is his program, his faith in the people, his vision for the people
and his vision for himself.
* * * * *
No one has ever nominated a President in a book before.
I do it because a book can be more quiet, more sensible and thoughtful,
more direct and human, and closer to the hearts of the people, than a
convention can.

A book can be more public too--can be attended by more people than a
convention. Only a few thousand people can get into a convention. A
hundred million can get into a book. All in the same two hours, by
twenty million lamps thousands of miles apart, the people can crowd
into a book.
So in this book, as I have said, I am merely acting as the secretary or
employee of the hundred million people. I am writing a book a hundred
million people would write if they could, expressing for them the kind
of President for the next four years of our nation--the most colossal
four years of the world, the people have ordered in their hearts.
We are weary of politicians' politicians. We want ours. Politicians may
not be so bad but during the war they do not seem to us to have done as
well as most people. In the dead-earnest of the war, with our Liberty
Loan and Red Cross and Council of Defense, and our dollar a year men
we have half taken over the government ourselves and we feel no
longer awed by the regular political practitioners or government
tinkerers. They are not all alike, of course, but we have turned our
national glass on them and have come to see through them--at least the
worst ones and many thousands of them--all these busy little worms of
public diplomacy building their faint vague little coral islands of bluff
and unbelief far far away from us, out in the great ocean of their
nothingness all by themselves.
Unless the more common run of our typical politicians see through
themselves before the conventions come, and see that the people see
through them, and see it quick, their days are numbered.
Instead of patronizing us and whispering to one another behind their
hands about us, their time has come now--in picking out the next
President to begin gazing up to the countenance of the people, to begin
listening to the people's prayer to God.
The people are a new people since the war. Out of the crash of empires,
out of threats in every man's door-yard the people are praying to God.
And they are voting to God, too.

The sooner the two great political parties reckon with this, the sooner
they push around behind themselves out of sight all the funny little
would-be Presidents, and all the little shan't-be politicians running
around like ants under the high heaven of the faith of a great people
picking up tidbits they dare to believe--and put forward instead a live
believing hot and cold human being, a man who will give up being
President for what he believes, the sooner they will find themselves
with a President on their hands that can be elected. Whichever party it
is