Moses said, “Thou shalt not!” President Wilson says, “Look!”

Perhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand field-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to look through—­he would not have had to say, “Thou shalt not.”

The precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the position of being President of the United States to-day is the amount of advertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he can crowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country.

A President becomes a great President in proportion as he acts authoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the Head Advertising Manager of the ideals of the people.  He is the great central, official editor of what the people are trying to find out—­of a nation’s news about itself.

By his being the President of what people think, by his dictating the subjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom the people shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million men we call the United States—­comes to order.

CHAPTER V

THE PRESIDENT SAYS “LOOK!”

Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says about him, is a rather weak-looking character.

The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in particular—­if it could be helped.  They were discouraged about allowing governments to be efficient.  Not very much that was constructive to do was handed over to him.  And the most important power they thought it would do for him to have was the veto or power to say “No.”

Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have allowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracy more, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do to let them have leaders, but they had just got away.  They felt timid about human nature and decided that the less constructive the government was and the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret a people, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better.

Looked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have been conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the average President interprets it.

Each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other branch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, look the whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave them alone more than anybody—­and put him in for President.

Looking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected like this could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem to be—­being the country’s most importantly helpless man—­the man who has been given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in America than any one else would be allowed to be.