The Ghost in the White House: Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want
John Stuart Mill · en
The next twenty-eight pages of this book might be entitled: "An Article
that Expected to Appear in the _Saturday Evening Post_."
When the twenty-eight pages, which had been conceived and written to be
read in this way, were completed, they were too late to submit to the
_Post_, and too late to change.
The reader is therefore requested to bear in mind (as I do) that he is
getting the next eleven chapters for nothing--that they have not been
paid for and it can only be left to people's imaginations whether the
_Saturday Evening Post_ would approve or believe what I believe, or
feel hurt if other people believe it.
* * * * *
The suggestion that before the new profession of being a lawyer backwards
is started we shall all try in the present crisis of the nation, doing
what we can as amateurs, putting in at once any little odd jobs of
criticism on ourselves which may come our way, brings up the whole matter
of an amateur technique for not being fooled by oneself.
It is easy enough to talk pleasantly about a man's power of
self-criticism or of self-discipline as the source of ideas, as a secret
of increased production in factories, or power over others in business,
and as a general rule for success whether in trade or in statesmanship, I
say it is, but what is there anybody can really do after all about having
or exercising this power of self-criticism?
If the readers of the _Saturday Evening Post_ were to come to me in a
body in this part of my book and ask me what there is, if anything,
they--the readers of the _Saturday Evening Post_ can do, and do now to
acquire a technique--a kind of general amateur technique for not being
fooled about themselves, I am afraid I would have a hard time in holding
back from giving good advice. Even at this moment without being asked at
all, I have a faint hopeful idea--I feel it at this moment floating about
my head--a kind of nimbus of wanting to tell other people what they ought
to do about not being fooled by themselves. But I have ripped the Thing
off. I cannot believe that only this far--in a few pages or so about it,
I have made people's not being fooled by themselves alluring enough to
them. It has occurred to me that perhaps if I want to have people in this
country really allured by the prospect of not being fooled by themselves,
the best thing for me to do is to pick out some man in the country
everybody knows who is especially lacking in a technique for not being
fooled by himself--some one man all our people have a perfect
passion,--almost an epidemic of not wanting to be like, and try to make
my idea alluring with him.
Naturally of course I have picked out Mr. Albert Sidney Burleson of
Austin, Texas, Postmaster Imperturbable of The United States.