And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of England and the President of the United States.

Just how much governing can a President do?

How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every morning in the papers of the country—­all these white fields of attention, these acres of other people’s thoughts, can he cover?

How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?

How many square miles of the people’s thoughts can he spread out at breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their faces?

I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of his thoughts, of his will, of his desires!

I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly published across a country—­the newspaper of people’s thoughts.

I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into headlines, into editorials, into news.  Mountains and hills are laid bare to say what he thinks.  Thousands of presses throb softly and the white reels of wood pulp fly into speech.  Thousands of miles of paper wet with the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night.

The President is saying Look! in the night!

The newsboys hasten out in the dawn.  They cry in the streets!

CHAPTER VI

THE PEOPLE SAY “WHO ARE YOU?”

If news is governing, how does the President do his governing?

By being News, himself.

By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News Themselves, news about American human nature—­where all the people will see it.

By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news about what is happening in his mind—­news about what he believes.

By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving the people’s enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next, sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program of issues.

By telling the people news about their best business men, the business men and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies, unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people.

By telling these business men news about the people—­and interpreting the people to them.

* * * * *

It is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a President can get into his government counts.

A man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him.

There are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselves would all be national news of the first importance if he had them.  The bare fact that a President could have certain traits at all and still get to be a President in this country, would be news.