The Ghost in the White House

BOOK I. What the People Expect of the People

WHAT THE PEOPLE EXPECT OF THE PEOPLE

I Gist 3 II The Lonesomest Job on Earth 4 III The President and the Ghost 6 IV Real Folks and the Ghost 12 V The Ghost Receives an Invitation 16 VI What a Body for the Ghost Would be Like 20 VII The Ghost gets Down to Business 25 VIII Three Rights of Man in a Democracy--The Right to Think 27 IX The Right to be Waited On 32 X The Right to Whisper 36 XI The Right to Whisper Together 39 XII The Right to Trust Somebody 41 XIII The Right to Vote All Day 46 XIV The Skilled Consumer 48 XV Sample Democracies 51 XVI The Town Pendulum 54 XVII The National Listening Machine 58 XVIII How the National Listening Machine Will Work 62 XIX Making a Right Start 64 XX Up to the People 66 XXI The Way for a Nation to Speak Up 68

BOOK II. What Each Man Expects of Himself

WHAT EACH MAN EXPECTS OF HIMSELF

I G. S. L. to Himself 75 II If I Were a Nation 78 III What the Mahogany Desk is Going to Do 81 IV Rules for Being Lied to 85 V Getting One Man Right 87 VI Getting Fifty Men Right 89 VII Engineers in Folks 91 VIII The Great New Profession 92 IX Getting People to Notice Facts 97 X The Fool Killers 100 XI The Whisperers 102 XII Mr. Dooley, Judge Gary and Mr. Gompers 103 XIII Fooling Onseself in Politics 108 XIV Swearing Off from Oneself in Time 112 XV Technique for not Being Fooled by Oneself 117 XVI The Autobiography of a Letter 120 XVII The Man Fifty Three Thousand Post Offices Failed On 124 XVIII Causes of Being Fooled About Oneself 126 XIX Loco-Mindedness 128 XX Flat-Thinking. Thinking in Me Flat 131 XXI Lost-Mindedness 133 XXII 137 XXIII Self-Discipline by Proxy 139 XXIV Machine Mindedness 142 XXV New Brain Tracks in Business 143

BOOK III. Technique for a Nation's Getting Its Way

TECHNIQUE FOR A NATION'S GETTING ITS WAY

I Big in Little 147 II Conscious Control of Brain Tracks 149 III What is Called Thinking 151 IV Living Down Cellar in One's Own Mind 156 V Being Helped up the Cellar Stairs 160 VI Reflections on the Stairs 166 VII Helping Other People up the Cellar Stairs 169 VIII Helping a Nation up the Cellar Stairs 173 IX Technique for Labor in Getting its Way 175 X Technique for Capital in Getting its Way 179 XI Philandering and Alexandering 183 XII The Factory that Lay Awake All Night 185 XIII Listening to Jim 191 XIV The New Company 196 XV The Fifty-Cent Dollar 198 XVI The Business Man, the Professional Man and the Artist 200 XVII The News-Man 203 XVIII W. J. 205 XIX The Look-Up Club Looks Up 207 XX Propagandy People 211 XXI The Skilled Consumers of Publicity 213

BOOK IV. The Technique of a Nation's Getting Its Way

THE TECHNIQUE OF A NATION'S GETTING ITS WAY

I Fourth of July All the Year Round 217 II The Vision and the Body 219 III The Call of a Hundred Million People 222 IV The Call of a World 227 V Missouri 232 VI A Victory Loan Advertisement 236

BOOK V. The Technique of a Nation's Being Born Again

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

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 that does this, and does it first and does it best, will be the one that will be underwritten by the people.

The people of this country are to-day in a religious mood toward the great coming political conventions and the questions and the men that will come up in them. We are on the whole, in spite of the low estimate the majority of politicians have of us, straight-minded and free-hearted people, shrewd, masterful and devout, praying with one hand and keeping from being fooled with the other and we want our public men to have courage and vision for themselves and for us. We give notice that thousands of our most complacently puttering, most quibbly and fuddly politicians are going to be taken out by the people, lifted up by the people, and dropped kindly but firmly over the edge of the world. This nation is facing the most colossal, most serious and godlike moment any nation has ever faced, and it does not propose in the presence of forty nations, in the presence of its own conscience, its own grim appalling hope, to be trifled with.

Continue reading The Ghost in the White House free in the Wunder reader →